The Garden of Love
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.
"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.
Summary
Upon going to a place called the Garden of Love, the speaker sees something that he or she has never seen before. A new chapel has been built in the middle of the garden, precisely where the speaker used to play on the grass.
Inspecting the chapel, the speaker sees that the gates are closed. Over the door, a forbidding message reads "Thou shalt not." The speaker then looks back over the garden, which used to be full of beautiful flowers.
Now, though, the garden is full of graves. Where the flowers used to grow, the speaker now finds only gravestones. The speaker then notices that the chapel's priests, who are dressed in black garments, are walking around the garden. The speaker says these priests are using thorny branches to hold back his or her "joys and desires."
Themes
Love vs. Organized Religion
Blake’s “The Garden of Love” takes aim against organized religion, arguing that it places unwieldy and unnecessary restrictions on people's lives. Instead of allowing love to flourish, religion binds it with rules and prevents people from embracing joy, desire, and community—those aspects of life that, according to the poem, are both natural and important.
At the start of the poem the speaker finds a chapel standing in the titular “Garden of Love.” A kind of takeover has taken place: the garden was once full of “sweet flowers” and made a fun spot for the speaker to play in as a child, but now is filled with tombstones and somber priests. The “chapel” and “priests” are specifically equated with Christianity, though the poem could arguably apply to organized religion in general. In any case, this image clearly represents religion effectively bulldozing over the joys—the “sweet flowers”—of life.
What’s more, though the chapel is meant to facilitate an understanding of God within its community, its gates are closed and topped off with a stern sign saying, “Thou shalt not.” This phrase evokes the biblical Ten Commandments, the list of rules set out by God for humanity to follow. The poem again emphasizes that, far from allowing love to flourish, religion has just created a world of restrictions in which people are literally locked out from “love” as they grow older.
In this context, religion becomes the exclusive preserve of a small group of elites, those priests who walk around the garden binding up the speaker’s “joys and desires.” They're dressed in black to demonstrate that they represent a kind of death. Similarly, the flowers that used to flourish in the garden have been replaced with graves and tombstones. Again, this all suggests that organized religion is in fact antithetical to the love it preaches; love has become deadened by the rules and restrictions of the Church.
Importantly, this isn’t necessarily a rejection of God. Instead, the poem seems to argue that religion has lost its way by becoming too focused on punishing sinfulness. The priests in the poem aren’t busying themselves with bringing religious understanding to the people—they’re just trying to make sure there is no “joy” or “desire” left in the garden.
In this sense, the poem becomes a sort of rewrite of the story of the Garden of Eden, the biblical paradise from which Adam and Eve were rejected after eating from the Tree of Knowledge and introducing sin into the world. Here, it is the capital-C Church itself that has fallen: the poem argues that organized religion has lost its way by becoming too wrapped up in rules and restrictions—things people can’t do rather than encouraging them to love in any way that they can.
Of course, the garden is called “the Garden of Love” for a reason: it flourished when joy and desire were allowed to be free, and is dying now that the chapel and humorless priests occupy the site. This represents a struggle that goes to the very core of what it means to be human, with the poem arguing that love—not fear, shame, and restrictions—is what really matters.
The poem, then, offers a bleak appraisal of the relationship between humanity and its religion. Love—whether romantic, sexual, or spiritual—is presented as something innate and fundamental to being human, yet it's under threat from the dogma of organized religion. People should fight against that, the poem suggests, and reclaim the Garden of Love for themselves.
Childhood vs. Adulthood
Though the poem's main thematic target is organized religion, there's a subtle argument around childhood being made as well. "The Garden of Love" comes from the Experience section of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, which is the section that looks at the way the adult world restricts the freedom, joy, and love that Blake argues are innate in childhood. Blake believed people are born with everything they need to live a happy life and have a close relationship with God, but that they basically unlearn how to do so under pressure from the misguided restrictions placed on them by the adult world.
This is a poem divided into two distinct times, and this divide maps neatly onto childhood and adulthood. Chronologically speaking, the speaker's original relationship with the Garden of Love is represented by lines 4, 8, and 10. These deal with how the garden used to be, and there is an implied link with childhood. The garden was the place that the speaker "used to play on the green"—where, as a child, he would express himself through play, experiencing direct and uncomplicated joy and happiness. This was a time of beauty and abundance, represented by the "sweet flowers" that used to fill the garden.
But the garden no longer represents the idyllic state of childhood. It now embodies all the rules and restrictions that oppress children as they become adults. This is best conceived as an attitude that says "thou shalt not" instead of "you can"—a narrowing of the world of possibilities instead of an embrace.
This somber, serious world of adulthood is further represented by the priests, who are the only people in the poem other than the speaker. Their black clothing, along with the tombstones, signals the death of childhood, and their incessant efforts to "bind" "joys and desires" show the oppression of the adult world.
사랑의 정원
사랑의 정원에 가서,
본 적 없는 것을 보았습니다;
뛰어 놀곤 하던 잔디밭 위,
그 가운데 교회가 지어져 있었습니다.
교회의 문들은 잠겨있었고,
문에는 ‘하지 말아라.’ 라고 쓰여있었습니다;
그래서 나는 어여쁜 꽃들이 한 가득 피어있는
사랑의 정원으로 돌아섰습니다.
그리고 나는 꽃들이 있었을 곳에
무덤과 묘비가 가득 채워진 것을;
검은 예복 입은 사제들이 그 주위를 걸으며,
내 즐거움과 갈망을 찔레 꽃으로 묶어가는 것을 보았습니다.