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?