Broider’d the ground, more color’d than with stone
Of costliest emblem.[487]
Yes, as I contemplated the stately trees and ravishing shrubs and blooms of this lovely garden on the sweetly murmuring Euphrates, I wished to believe that the tradition which located Paradise at or near this spot was well founded and that I was actually gazing on some of the floral and arboreal descendants of those which here sheltered
Adam, the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
I wished also to believe that we here saw a remnant of that spot which was a prototype of the Garden of the Hesperides, the Elysian Fields, the Isles of the Blessed and what was a type and figure of the Celestial Paradise and of the home of Our Father in Heaven.
CHAPTER XVIII
BABYLON
A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon
Spreads o’er the blasted plain;
The wandering Arab never sets his tent