THE HIDDEN PARADISE
Reading edition
Our passion is a secret Paradise— Eden of lotos and the fruitful date, With silence walled and held undesecrate By man or prying seraph: We are wise As any god and goddess, who have wrung From roseal fruitage of a bough forbidden, The happy wine we drink, we drink unchidden, Deep in the vales where vernal leaves are young, And the first poppies loiter.**** Though the breath Of all the gods a bolted storm prepare, And blood-red gloom of thunders blind the sun, Shall we not turn, with clinging kisses there, And, laughing, quaff some dreamless wine of death— Triumphant still, in mere oblivion?