Ebony and Crystal/The Hidden Paradise

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Ebony and Crystal (1922)
by Clark Ashton Smith
The Hidden Paradise
19070Ebony and Crystal — The Hidden ParadiseClark Ashton Smith

THE HIDDEN PARADISE

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?