God the first garden made, and the first city.

Cowley’s line contrasts two archetypal human environments: the garden (Eden, nature ordered by divine design) and the city (a human-built, social and political construct). The aphoristic pairing implies a hierarchy of values: cultivation of the natural world and contemplative retirement are presented as closer to God’s original intention than urban life, with its ambition, noise, and corruption. In Cowley’s broader moral imagination, the “first garden” evokes innocence and harmony, while the “first city” recalls the postlapsarian world of labor, rivalry, and power. The quote thus participates in a long early-modern tradition that idealizes rural simplicity over court and city.