By the Rivers They Sat and Wept

"By the rivers of Babylon -
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion."

Psalm 137:1 (New Revised Standard Version)

By the rivers of Babylon they sat and wept when they remembered Zion.

Were the rivers of Babylon beautiful, where they sat and wept? Did the beauty of the rivers remind them of Zion, so that they wept? Did the beauty remind them of the beauty of Zion, and was the beauty of Zion greater than the beauty about them where they sat and wept? Or did the beauty about them simply pierce their hearts with the awareness of what they had no longer - awareness of their alienation, their separation from some thing and some place fundamental and essential to which they belonged?

Or were they oblivious to the beauty of the rivers of Babylon all about them? Were they so fixated on some other thing and some other place that they could not perceive the beauty about them? Were they so invested in some other thing and place that they felt - consciously or unconsciously - they had to ignore or denigrate the beauty about them? Did they feel they would be disloyal to Zion, or did they fear that recognition of the beauty around them would undermine the lives they had built on their alienation?