garden of love essay

The Garden of Love Summary & Analysis by William Blake

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

"The Garden of Love" is a poem by English Romantic visionary William Blake. Blake was devoutly religious, but he had some major disagreements with the organized religion of his day. The poem expresses this, arguing that religion should be about love, freedom, and joy—not rules and restrictions. The poem is part of his famous collection Songs of Innocence and Experience , which was first published in 1789.

• Read the full text of “The Garden of Love”

The Full Text of “The Garden of Love”

1 I went to the Garden of Love, 

2 And saw what I never had seen: 

3 A Chapel was built in the midst, 

4 Where I used to play on the green. 

5 And the gates of this Chapel were shut, 

6 And Thou shalt not. writ over the door; 

7 So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, 

8 That so many sweet flowers bore. 

9 And I saw it was filled with graves, 

10 And tomb-stones where flowers should be: 

11 And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, 

12 And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

“The Garden of Love” Summary

“the garden of love” themes.

Love vs. Organized Religion

• See where this theme is active in the poem.

Childhood vs. Adulthood

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “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: 

Lines 11-12

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,  And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

“The Garden of Love” Symbols

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Graves and Tombstones

“the garden of love” poetic devices & figurative language.

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Alliteration

Polysyndeton, end-stopped line, “the garden of love” vocabulary.

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Thou shalt not
• See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Garden of Love”

Rhyme scheme, “the garden of love” speaker, “the garden of love” setting, literary and historical context of “the garden of love”, more “the garden of love” resources, external resources.

Illustration and Other Poems — A resource from the Tate organization, which holds a large collection of Blake originals. Here the poem can be seen in its original illustrated form.

Blake's Radicalism — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's radicalism.

Blake's Visions — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's religious visions.

Full Text of Songs of Innocence and Experience — Various formats for the full text in which "The Garden of Love" is collected.

A Reading by Allen Ginsberg — Beat poet Allen Ginsberg reads the poem.

LitCharts on Other Poems by William Blake

Ah! Sun-flower

A Poison Tree

Earth's Answer

Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)

Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence)

Infant Sorrow

Introduction (Songs of Innocence)

Nurse's Song (Songs of Experience)

Nurse's Song (Songs of Innocence)

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)

The Clod and the Pebble

The Divine Image

The Ecchoing Green

The Human Abstract

The Little Black Boy

The Little Vagabond

The School Boy

The Sick Rose

To the Evening Star

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

A Summary and Analysis of William Blake’s ‘The Garden of Love’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Many of William Blake’s greatest poems are written in clear and simple language, using the quatrain form which faintly summons the ballad metre used in popular oral poetry. But some of his poetry, being allegorical and symbolic in nature, requires some careful close reading and textual analysis. ‘The Garden of Love’ is one such example. What is this poem about?

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.

In summary, Blake’s speaker goes into the Garden of Love and finds a chapel built on the spot where he used to play as a child. The gates of the chapel are shut, and commandments and prohibitions are written over the door. The garden has become a graveyard, its flowers replaced by tombstones. This idea of love starting out as a land of liberty and promise but ending up a world of death and restriction is expressed very powerfully through the image of the garden.

Gardens in poetry often tempt us to recall the first biblical garden, the Garden of Eden, and the paradise which Adam and Eve lost when they succumbed to temptation and tasted the forbidden fruit.

And ‘The Garden of Love’ is a poem that reflects William Blake’s detestation of organised religion. Blake was a deeply spiritual artist and poet, but he disliked the institutions associated with religion, and this can be seen clearly in this poem, where the garden of love, formerly associated with play and carefree childhood, is now the site of a ‘Chapel’: a physical embodiment of the Church.

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.

This is no welcoming chapel, for the gates are shut (perhaps inspiring Christina Rossetti to write her great poem on a similar theme, ‘Shut Out’ ), and the chapel is marked by commandments forbidding certain things (‘Thou shalt not’ recalling the famous Ten Commandments from the Old Testament).

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.

But even the garden which surrounds this chapel has changed, and has become a graveyard: death has replaced life, as tomb-stones have supplanted flowers in the ground.

Then, a final image of the Church’s restrictive power: in the final couplet, where for the first time we get internal rhyme (gowns/rounds, briars/desires) and the tetrameter which had held sway until now gives way to the longer pentameter (leading to a sense of collapse or deflation, rather than welcome expansiveness), the priests are further doling out commandments, by restricting the poet’s ‘joys and desires’.

The message of ‘The Garden of Love’ appears to be fairly clear, therefore: organised religion is anathema to love, and is about imposing control and restrictions on us, killing our happiness and curbing our natural desires and wishes. The institutions of religion, unlike the joyousness of religious belief itself, turn the world from a garden (symbolising growth and life) into a grave (symbolising death and decay).

Blake was by no means the first writer to criticise organised religion and argue that it fell short of the ideals it purported to espouse – we find many Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers, such as Thomas Paine in his brilliant  The Age of Reason , propounding such a viewpoint – but to put it in such vividly symbolic and clear terms is a testament to Blake’s gift as a poet.

But is the poem’s meaning as straightforward as this analysis suggests? Perhaps not. In his excellent study of Blake’s poetry, Blake’s Contrary States: The ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ as Dramatic Poems , D. G. Gillham observes that the fault may lie as much within the speaker himself as it does in organised religion.

Gillham suggests that a religious conversion (robbing the speaker of his enjoyment of nature, which has become tainted when viewed from a religious perspective) or sexual disenchantment may be at the root of the speaker’s attack on religion in this poem.

‘In short, the speaker is a fool or a hypocrite,’ Gillham adds, noting that whilst the speaker’s criticism of the Church may hold some truth, his ‘distorted’ view of the Garden of Love puts the blame back on himself as much as on outside forces.

‘The Garden of Love’ and ‘A Poison Tree’

Indeed, in the same book Gillham makes a similar argument about a number of other Blake poems, such as ‘A Poison Tree’: in that poem, the speaker grows a poisoned apple with which to tempt his foe, and is victorious when his enemy steals into his garden to eat the deadly fruit.

But the speaker, Blake suggests, has also been ‘poisoned’ or corrupted by the act of deceiving his foe, because he resorted to dishonest and underhand tactics to vanquish him. In this respect, we might view the two poems as offering a productive dialogue about the nature of self versus other. Of course, in both poems, Blake uses the (richly symbolic) landscape of the garden to present his idea. We have analysed ‘A Poison Tree’ here .

So, perhaps the speaker of ‘The Garden of Love’ is not exactly beyond reproach himself. What evidence is there in the poem for such an interpretation? The idea that the speaker has undergone some late religious conversion is supported by the poem’s opening stanza:

‘I went to the Garden of Love, / And saw what I never had seen’: in other words, he had never noticed the Chapel there before. The wording of the third line (‘A Chapel was built in the midst ’) allows for the possibility that the Chapel has always been there, and it is merely the speaker’s blinkered vision that prevented him from noticing it. This suggests a religious conversion.

What this also implies is that the ‘Garden of Love’ is a mental, symbolic garden, where a Chapel has both been there all the time and not been there; where the speaker has been able to play on the green even though a Chapel is constructed there, a structure he has managed to ignore until now. And as Gillham observes, if the Garden is of the mind, and the Chapel that despoils it is also of the mind, the corruption stems from the speaker’s own mental attitude rather than an external reality.

Or, to put it another way, it is the mental and moral views we bring to something that either taint it or brighten it. Someone who worshipped a religion that taught the worshipper to be suspicious of arcs of different colours would see little beauty in a rainbow!

A note on metre: like many Blake poems, ‘The Garden of Love’ is written in quatrains (rhymed, in this case,  abcb , although the final two lines of the final stanza depart from this and instead use internal rhyme on  gowns  and rounds and  briars and desires ), but instead of using tetrameter (i.e. four feet per line), Blake uses a more variable trimeter rhythm. This means there are three main stresses per line, rather than four:

I WENT / to the GAR- / den of LOVE, And SAW / what I NE- / ver had SEEN: A CHA- / pel was BUILT / in the MIDST, Where I USED / to PLAY / on the GREEN.

We have marked the breaks between each foot with a / mark. As you can see, the main pattern in each line (consistent in the first three lines) is to have a two-syllable foot (e.g. ‘And SAW’) followed by two three-syllable feet.

This means we can identify the basic ground-plan of the poem’s metre as something called  anapaestic trimeter , with iambic substitutions. In other words, in each of those first three lines we have an iamb (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed) and then a pair of anapaests (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed).

As suggested above, the Christina Rossetti poem ‘Shut Out’ (1862) provides a neat complement to Blake’s poem, and may even have been written with it in mind. Like ‘The Garden of Love’, it is written in simple quatrains, albeit with a different rhyme scheme. You can read Rossetti’s poem, and our analysis of it, here .

6 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of William Blake’s ‘The Garden of Love’”

“The Garden of Love” deserves to be one of the most memorable short lyrics in the English language. A favorite Blake lyric of Allen Ginsberg’s by the way.

And thanks for pointing us to the Christina Rossetti poem, new to me, which does seem to be a complementary expression reflecting in some part on the Blake.

And it wasn’t just organised religion Blake railed against; it was the whole of society!. He called it eternal Death or Ulro and put the ‘blame’ on Single Vision. To simplify his complex mythology he saw humankind as in a fallen state, largely because we have forgotten our ‘divinity’ and relied on the rationalising mind. Imagination and self-inquiry are necessary to release ourselves from Urizen’s manacles! It is sobering to think that things have got worse since his days. In many ways he predicted the wage-slave situation most of us find ourselves in today. And what about mechanisation/consumerism and the devaluing of the human spirit? I’ve even been told there are robot servants in Japan today!

Nice one, Mr Blake.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

Love this poem. It nails it on the head, the corruption of organised religion. When you look at how most religions end up, you have to agree with Blake!

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The Garden of Love

By William Blake

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.

Summary of The Garden of Love

• Popularity of “The Garden of Love”: “The Garden of Love” by William Blake, one of the most popular English poets and authors, is a thoughtful poem . It was published in 1974 in his work,  Song of Experience.  The poem presents the speaker ’s amazement over the change he witnesses in the Garden of love. It also sheds light on the constantly changing cycle of the world.The poem attains widespread popularity on account of its representation of a place that has lost its prime.
• “The Garden of Love”, As a Representative of Amazement: Written from a young man’s perspective , the poem highlights how everything changes over time. It begins with a happy note when the speaker enters a place he refers to as the Garden of Love. Perhaps he has spent quality time at that place and might have decided to visit the place keeping in mind the same joyous memories. However, to his surprise, the garden of love has lost its original appearance as the beautiful place has undergone a significant transformation. The chapel, where he used to play, is now closed and no one is allowed to write over the door. Therefore, he returns to the garden of love. He wonders how a place that once filled with sweet flowers is now occupied with graves, tombstones, and priests who are preparing a funeral with desires and joy.
• Major Themes in “The Garden of Love”: The changing nature of time, past versus present, and amazement are three major themes of the poem. The speaker introduces a place once the epitome of happiness and joy. He enters the place having the same exuberant memories. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm fades away when he sees that the site is no longer the same.   From the chapel to flowery gardens, everything is now set to meet the current standards of the world. The place has lost its originality and actual colors. In fact, the people have altered this sacred and holy place to satisfy their needs and desires.

Analysis of Literary Devices Used in “The Garden of Love”

literary devices create a distinct mood , tone , and meanings in the poem. The analysis of the devices used in the poem is as follows.

• Assonance : Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as the sound of /a/ and /o/ in “And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds” and again the sound of /o/ in “And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door.”
• Allegory : It is a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters , figures, and events. This is an allegoric poem that speaks about the altering nature of time.
• Anaphora : It refers to the repetition of a word or expression in the first part of some verses . Blake has repeated the word “and” in the last stanza of the poem to emphasize the point such as;

“ And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds.”

• Allusion : Allusion is a belief and an indirect reference of a person, place, thing or idea of a historical, cultural, political or literary significance. William Blake alludes to the Christian religion in the opening line of the poem such as “I went to the Garden of Love.”
• Alliteration : Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /w/ in “were walking.”
• Consonance : Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /r/ in “And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds” and the sound of /t/ in “And the gates of this Chapel were shut.”
• Imagery : Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. William Blake has used imagery in this poem such as “And I saw it was filled with graves”, “And tomb-stones where flowers should be,” and “A Chapel was built in the midst.”
• Metaphor : It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between the objects that are different in nature. The poet has used this device in the opening lines of the poem, where it plays metaphorically represents youth such as “Where I used to play on the green.”
• Metonymy : Metonymy is a figure of speech in which one object or idea takes the place of another with which it has a close association. The poet has used this device in the last line of the first stanza such as; “Where I used to play on the green.”
• Symbolism : Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them symbolic meanings that are different from literal meanings. The poem uses symbols such as youth, past glories and the power of time.

Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in “The Garden of Love”

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is the analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem.

• Diction and Tone: The poem shows descriptive diction but the tone is somewhat sad and nostalgic.
• End Rhyme : End rhyme is used to make the stanza melodious. William Blake has used rhyming words in the poem such as; “seen/green” and “door/bore.”
• Rhyme Scheme : The poem follows ABAB rhyme scheme and this pattern throughout the poem.
• Quatrain : A quatrain is a four lined stanza borrowed from Persian poetry. Here each stanza is quatrain.
• Stanza : A stanza is a poetic form of some lines. There are three stanzas in this poem with each having a same number of lines.

Quotes to be Used

These lines from the poem, “The Garden of Love” are useful to use while reminiscing the good memories.

“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.”

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The Garden of Love Summary and Analysis

Critical appreciation of the garden of love by william blake.

The Garden of Love is a short lyric written by William Blake, one of the most popular poets of the Romantic age. First published in 1794, this poem formed a part of Blake’s collection of poetry Songs of Experience which is the complementary book to his Songs of Innocence presenting the corruption and repression prevalent in the world of adults as against the innocent world of childhood. As in the other poems of this collection, in this poem too, Blake expresses his perspective upon the despotism and repressive morality imposed by the institutionalized religion, and how it seems to control and suppress all forms of natural desires and passions. Blake’s poem “The Echoing Green”, and to a certain extent, “The Nurse’s Song” are this poem’s “pair” in the Songs of Innocence and aims to show that experience drowns the innocence of life, giving

A true Romantic at heart, Blake believed that love should not be sanctified by religion and should instead be allowed the freedom to grow and prosper without any inhibitions and restrictions. Quite unorthodox in his views, he rebelled against the orthodox morality of the church and thought that love, sexuality and passion are instinctive to man and should therefore not be considered as sin. These forces, which are holy and pure, are tainted as being forbidden by religion, which in Blake’s opinion should be less about rules and restrictions and more about joy, freedom and love.

This poem can also be seen as Blake’s statement against the idea of the original sin according to which man was expelled out of heaven as a punishment for succumbing to desire. He believes that the laws and strict code of conduct enforced by the priests, the church and even the holy texts such as the Ten Commandments, exist without any rationale. They are against the basic nature of humanity and should therefore be moulded and re-shaped to allow the positive forces of love and passion to flow freely.

The Garden of Love | Summary

The garden of love | summary lines 1-4.

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.

Revisiting the Garden of Love, the place where he used to play when he was a child, the poet comes across an unexpected sight, one which he had never seen coming. A Chapel was built right in the middle of this green, open space where he used to play in without any care or reservations. But now, this beautiful place has lost that carefree air as the spirit of freedom seems to be caged amidst the rigid walls of the holy institution that had replaced his childhood playground.

The Garden of Love | Summary, Lines 5-8

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.

The gates of this church are closed, which is unusual because the doors of God should be open and welcoming instead of being shut to the visitors. Moreover, the door bears a forbidding message which reads “Thou shalt not”, suggestive of the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament. He turns away from these prohibitions and restrictions, seemingly imposed by the authoritative religion. Seeking repose from such symbols of confinement, he goes back to the garden in search of the beautiful flowers that bloomed therein, filling the air with their sweet fragrance.

The Garden of Love | Summary, Lines 9-12

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.

However, the poet discovers that the garden has undergone a drastic change, and not for the better. Where earlier there were blooming flowers, the symbols of life and joy; now all that can be seen are graves. Tomb-stones have replaced the sweet-smelling flowers just like the Church’s oppressive condemnation of free thought has superseded the vital forces of passion and love. The garden, which during his childhood was full of happy vibes, now reeks of misery and death. Amidst this garden, priests can be seen taking their rounds, maybe keeping a vigil over both the living and the dead, ready to condemn all sins. As opposed to the usual white robes which emanate peace and acceptance, they don black gowns, symbolic of mourning as well as their absolutist principles and morality that frowns upon the feelings of love and desire. They are completely devoid of all compassion and demand strict adherence to the rules and laws laid down by the church, regardless of them being restrictive of an individual’s freedom of spirit. They use sharp, thorny branches to restrain the poet who has come looking for gaiety and pleasure in the Garden of Love, against the commandments of their religion.

The Garden of Love | Analysis

“The Garden of Love” is an allegorical poem in which Blake satirizes the Church and its morality that imposes restrictions on passions of the heart, aiming to control all desires and emotions of man.

The Garden of Love | Structure

This short lyric is composed of three quatrains and follows an irregular metre. While the first two stanzas follow the rhyme scheme of ABCB, the last two lines of the third stanza break free from this rhyme scheme, employing internal rhyme instead (gowns/rounds and briars/desires). This is perhaps representative of the chaos and disorder that pervades religion which is what Blake has tried to portray in this poem

The language used is very simple and clear, as is characteristic of Blake’s style. But as one reads closely, one can see the great depth and ideas that these seemingly simple words express.

While the first stanza portrays the idyllic stage of childhood when the poet used play in the Garden of Love, the second stanza expresses his disappointment as he sees the changes that have happened in the garden. In the last stanza, the poet’s despair reaches its highest levels as he sees graves where once, sweet flowers used to bloom.

The Garden of Love | Themes

Through his depiction of the change that has come over the garden, his childhood haunt, the poet shows the shift that religion has undergone- from being a source that guides man towards the path of true contentment, it has become an institution that seeks to imprison an individual and curb his desires and happiness.

The garden is used as a powerful symbol to express the degeneration and corruption of the Church which was once the pious shrine of God, the Supreme being.

Sanctimonious morality has corrupted religion, the same way the church and the graves surrounding it have replaced the pristine and unadulterated beauty of the green, open garden which was full of flowers and joy.

The spiritual, which is in fact an extension of the physical, has been confined within the institutional prison of the church. Fear and guilt have replaced the true joy of following one’s inner calling as control overpowers love.

The Garden of Love | Literary Devices

Anaphora has been used as seen in the repetition of the word “And” at the beginning of the first two lines of the second stanza and all the lines of the third stanza.

Symbolism permeates the entire lyric. The garden is symbolic of the joy and passions, while the church represents the forces of organized religion which are against all desires.

The lush green landscape of the past, flowers that used to bloom in the garden earlier and their subsequent degeneration on being replaced by the chapel and tombstones are representative of contrast between the innocence and liveliness of childhood as against the gloom and despair of experience.

The “briars” held by the priests in “black gowns” seem to portray the authoritarianism that has taken over spiritualism in these men of religion and how they give more importance to punishment and sin as compared to the realization of true happiness and peace in life.

The gates of the church being shut, with warning signs put over them, shows how the church, which was at one time always open for all, is now no longer as welcoming and accepting.

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The Garden of Love

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Table of Contents

Introduction

In the poem The Garden of Love , William Blake explains how the Church has taken away the happiness of the people by imposing a lot of restrictions on their freedom and the things which used to comfort them.

Blake uses the first-person perspective to share his experience as a child when he used to play in the garden of love. But after growing up, when he returned back, he found that the garden of love was no more. Instead, there was a Church which forbade people from entering there. Moreover, there were graves everywhere.

The poem has been divided into three stanzas having four lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABCB DEFE GHIJ.

The Garden of Love Poem Summary

The poet says that after getting old, he goes back to th e garden of love where he used to play. There he sees something which he never saw before. It means that the poet is shocked to see something new in the garden of love.

He sees that a Chapel (worship house of Christians) is built in the middle of the green garden where he used to play when he was young. The first stanza depicts the poet’s dissatisfaction with the religion and the places of worship.

The poet says that the gates of that Chapel were shut and it was written over the doors that no one should enter or play or do anything else there. These two lines of the stanza 2 quite important because they reveal the real face of the popular religion.

Blake was a Romantic Poet who firmly believed in God. However, that didn’t make him to blindly follow religion and religious practices. Instead, he was highly critical of the clergy who used to befool people in the name of religion and extract money from them. Not only this, but they also put restrictions on them thus discouraging them from free and critical thinking.

In these lines, the poet says that the Chruch was built right in the middle of the garden of love. If we go deeper into the words, we find that the poet is talking about the doctrines which were put forward by the clergy. They forbade the people from enjoying their lives and made them bow before them.

In the third line, the poet says that he then turned to the Garden of Love which bore a number of sweet flowers . The stanza ends here.

This stanza continues from the second one. The poet sees that the garden of love is filled with graves and tombstones where once the flowers used to bloom. Moreover, priests were walking around in black gowns (long elegant dress) in that garden who according to the poet had bound or trapped his joys and desires .

In this stanza, the poet uses some dark images to depict the negativity of religion. Graves, tombstones and black gowns are all dark images which depict sorrow, grief, death and despair. All these images show how religion has taken away the happiness of humans. It is not preaching about God but its own selfish desires on the cost of people’s happiness.

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The Garden of Love

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Discussion Questions

Analysis: “The Garden Of Love”

A quick analysis of “The Garden of Love” reveals the following: “The green” (Line 4) refers to the idea of the village green, the grassy area in the middle of a village where social events like festivals took place, which was a common area for free public use. Children would have played safely and innocently in such a spot. In addition, traditionally, churches and chapels in England have gardens around them, which may be tended or left to grow wild. These church gardens also contain the burial grounds for the local population, but there are often still empty areas.

The three words “Thou shalt not” (Line 6) in the second stanza are the beginning of several of the Ten Commandments found in the Christian Old Testament, such as “Thou shalt not kill.” They are moral imperatives, meaning, “You must not.” The speaker turns away from the door, toward the garden , but finds that it no longer contains the “sweet flowers” that it previously “bore” or contained (Line 8).

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Home / Essay Samples / Literature / William Blake / Literary Analysis Of The Garden Of Love By William Blake

Literary Analysis Of The Garden Of Love By William Blake

• Category: Literature
• Topic: Poetry , William Blake

Pages: 2 (890 words)

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Works Cited

• Blake, William. “The Garden of Love.” Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology, edited by Helen Vendler, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018, pp. 324.

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