The garden of Eden is often used as synonymous with an earthly paradise, a garden of delight, wherein are found beauty, temperate air, and endless ease from struggle. This concept of a happy isle is a common one in heroic song. It shows how the human mind has longed for continuous pleasure and rest in matter, in some far-off place
"Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly."
But although song and story have pictured Avalons, human experience has found pleasure and pain side by side, the one passing into the other at an almost indistinguishable point.
