(From Christophe des Laurières)

My heart is like some onyx urn
Upon whose cold and carven side
Antique symbolic serpents glide
In scrolls that wander and return;

Where orchid and where columbine
Intort their blooms ambiguously;
Where over some exotic tree
Clambers the grape's familiar vine.

How fair and strange the art thereof!
But - irony supreme - within,
The poisonous black dust of sin
And ashes from dark pyres of love.