Adam.
By W. M. MacKeracher
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.