IT WOULD SEEM YOUR LIPS SHOULD BLAZE A BRAND ACROSS MY BROW . . .

      I forget the title of this poem but think it appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal in the fifties.  I liked it well enough to memorize it.

  This is strange . . . that we who share this ecstasy together

  Should find no mark upon us, as on the tree chaotic passionate weather

  Scores leaf and bough with scars tempestuous.

  For it would seem your lips should blaze a brand

  Across my brow; your touch should burn and bruise me,

  And my quick ardently caressing hand

  Should sign you, too, so you could never lose me.

  And yet, a flash of brush across my hair,

  A swift, hard smoothing out, your cooling glance,

  We could go down, if company should call . . .

  And they'd not guess; no one would know at all.