Eden is a flowery place,
Jerusalem is stone.
Eden's hung with gleaming fruit,
Jerusalem stripped to bone.
How sweetly flow those early saps,
how dewed that first demesne;
how bitter-parched, how riven and wracked
by drought this builded one.
Until, at last—
O rod that smites
the very rock, and shows
such gush of pure, translucent grace
no dreaming Eden knows.
