Were I a poet I would ask no grander theme than Adam's first century upon the earth--that age of gold when Man was sufficient unto himself. A century undisputed master of the world! A century of familiar converse in Eden's consecrated groves with the great First Cause--the omnipresent and omnipotent God. Picture one day of such existence! Ambition and Avarice, Jealousy and Passion, those demons that have deluged the world with blood and tears, have no place in Adam's peaceful bosom. He is not in the Grove of Daphne, where lust is law, but in the Garden of God where love is life. His subjects, not dumb as now, or speaking a language strange to our dull ears, greet him as he comes forth at break of day from his aromatic bower. A thousand feathered songsters drown his soul in melody divine, while every bud and blossom, a living censer, sways in the balmy breath of morn and pours forth its grateful perfume. The forest monarch lays his massy head on Adam's knee, the spotted leopard purrs about him and the fawn nestles between his feet. High above the Caucasian peaks a condor poises motionless in mid-heaven, the unrisen sun gilding him as with beaten gold. Now the sawlike summits, cloud-kissing and crowned with eternal snow, burst into the brilliant sea and gleam like the brow of God, while the purple mists are drawn up from the deep valleys as though the giants fain would hide from earth their splendors, reserving them alone for Heaven. Higher and higher wheels the great sun, driving the river mist before it and sending down through the softly whispering foliage a thousand shafts of burnished gold that seek out the violet, drain the nectareous dewdrop from its chalice and kiss the grape until its youthful sap changes to empurpled blood beneath the passionate caress. In the cool shadows by the great spring--a magic mirror in whose pellucid depths are reflected heaven's imperial concave and Eden's virgin splendors--God walks familiar with Adam as with a younger brother, explains to him the use and beauty of all that is, and spreads before his wondering eyes Creation's mighty plan.