A Night In Babylon.

We whom to-night Love keeps awake For his own joy, may one day break Our fast in some Lethéan cave, When we but a faint memory have, Or none, of such dear nights as this. Sweetheart! thy lips again to kiss, Thy limbs to fold, though all ends thus And time makes such poor wrecks of us, Who feast to-night on Love's own food As in a heavenly solitude, And drink his wine, — this bliss of ours Which makes our bodies bloom like flowers, In whose quick scents our souls escape We know not where — each wingéd shape That haply shall elude the curse When we have lost the universe In this night's Babylonian heart — Have then lost all that may impart Life to the dead, the lust of that On which the purple heart grows fat, And thrills to prove that it can be The bourne of its own ecstasy Within a paradise whose skies Have never known the sun to rise Nor all the moony rapture wane! Clasp me, Sweetheart! and kiss again Until we have so drunk the light Of this delirious sweet night Our souls may nevermore be dry, Though death our bodies may deny The power to appease that thirst Which Love's heat raised within us first Ere he had taught our lips and eyes The purport of his paradise, And made the trembling senses take The night for day, and keep awake With all the strange delights that are Under our Babylonian star That came from chaos, it may be, To guard our first night's mystery, And let his cloak of glory lie Over us, dear, who would not die. Ah, Sweetheart! if all comes to this, And we must lose the sum of bliss (When we lie by the Lethéan wave And know that nothing Love can save) We may forget ourselves, and be Content with Death's tranquillity.