What would anyone do with such a paradise where the celestial maidens are millions of years old?

Here, the poet uses brilliant wit and gentle satire to poke fun at the orthodox, literalist descriptions of paradise. Believers are traditionally promised heavenly companions, but the speaker cheekily points out that if these celestial maidens were created at the dawn of time, they must now be unimaginably ancient! Beneath the lighthearted joke lies a profound celebration of earthly life and its vibrant, tangible beauty over an abstract and sterile afterlife.