Ebony and Crystal/The Hidden Paradise

by Clark Ashton Smith

THE HIDDEN PARADISE

Our passion is a secret Paradise—Eden of lotos and the fruitful date,With silence walled and held undesecrateBy man or prying seraph: We are wise

As any god and goddess, who have wrungFrom 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 breathOf 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?