Sonnet Cxcix: Poem by George Henry Boker

What spirit worthy of its noble birth
Regrets for Eden and the harmless state
Of him who gamboled with his guileless mate,
But little wiser than the beasts of earth?
Rather for me the pangs of cold and dearth,
The shameful knowledge that foreran our fate,
The bitter tears beyond the fiery gate,
And life before with all its love and mirth.
Who would forego the glories of our past--
The war with sin, the mystic sacrifice,
The temporal fall and the eternal rise?
Or match that garden with the vision vast,
Seen by the heart through love's supernal eyes,
That brightens earth, and dawns in heaven at last.