library.SCOTCH: The Poetry of William Blake: The Garden of Love

'The Garden of Love' by William Blake

The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love

That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be;

And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys & desires.

BlakeSongSettings. (2010). The Garden of Love with Commentary by Jeff Gillett. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20160419010624/http://blakesongsettings.co.uk/index.php/the-poems/92-the-garden-of-love
This poem is a further attack on religious attitudes, and on the supposedly Christian priests’ suppression of natural human desires and pleasures. The speaker tells of how we went to what used to be a beautiful garden, only to find that the flowers were all gone, and the living beauty replaced by cold stone and the deadness of repressive religion.
The Garden of Love - Summary and Analysis. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.enotes.com/topics/the-garden-of-love
The lyrics in the Songs of Experience are usually darker and more disillusioned in tone than those in the Songs of Innocence. Certainly this is true of “The Garden of Love.”

Gilbert, F. (2013, August 26). The Garden of Love [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHubXVjsj9g