ADAM.

God made him, like the angels, innocent,

And made a garden marvellously fair,

With arbors green, sun-kissed and dew-besprent,

And fruits and flowers whose fragrance filled the air;

Where rivers four meandered with delight,

And in the soil were gleaming treasures laid,

Good gold and bdellium and the onyx bright;

And set therein the man whom He had made;

And proved to him by sad experience

That not in bowers of indolence, supine

On beds of ease, could ev'n Omnipotence

Work out in man His last and best design;

And in great love and wisdom drove him thence,

And cursed him with a blessing most benign.