Hugh Cuthbert - II. And After lyrics

Where all was Eden, all is Eden-less. The Garden vanished--earth and sea and sky, The sunbeams, flowers--even as you and I All sundered stand in stricken loneliness; The tangled Paradise a wilderness Of ordered isolations! The great soul, Which made of all things one harmonious whole, Shredded to serve the fragments which caress The separate being they curse! Nought but the Gate Remains--fronting our Life as day by day It seeks the happiness it cast away To snatch a venomed knowledge. Alas! stern fate-- To find its own discarded innocence Become a flaming sword to drive it thence.