The Garden of Love (poem)

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.

Blake was a master of lyrical poetry, and one cannot understand him without pausing to appreciate such elements as the careful placement of capital letters, the deliberate hiccups in rhythm (lines 4 and 6), and the disorder that comes with line 11 as the previous order of trimeter suddenly tumbles into chaos with the force of the sudden tetrameter/pentameter (depending upon individual interpretation of rhythm).

It can then perhaps be inferred that he is speaking from the point of view of innocence who has just entered the world of experience and is in a state of shock and sadness at how his previous freedoms have been blocked and squashed by the Church.

A more common, alternate reading – and one more in keeping with what is known about Blake, his education and politics, and the times in which he lived – is that the poem simply reflects his views that the Church was an oppressor of free thought.

Songs of Experience – from which this poem is drawn – points to the effects on the inherent innocence possessed by all, by the oppression of government and church, the Industrial Revolution, and lack of child labor regulations amongst the other things of the coming modernism.