GARDEN OF LOVE - WILIAM BLAKE ESSAY POEM PDF

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ESSAY WILIMA BLAKE GARDEN OF LOVE IT IS VERT GOOD...

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Q- How is society presented as restricting love and desire in Blake’s The Garden of Love?

William Blake’s poem ‘The Garden of Love’ was written in 1794 and was one of the series of poems in Blake’s collection, Song of Experience. Blake was a leading figure in the Romantic literature movement to express his passionate religious beliefs. The Romantics were known for their adoration for natural state of being and experimenting with new concepts of idealisation – particularly in the spiritual and religious form in Blake’s work. The poem explores his love for the church, how it shifts in society caused an unfortunate change for his God. The opening of the poem begins with the line through the pronoun of “I” immediately indicates to the reader that the poem is deeply personal and will reflect the emotions of the persona or author. Love is presented allegorically, alluding to Adam and Eve, who were allowed freedom of innocent and uninhibited sexual expression. However, after the ‘fall of humankind”, the sexual act has become one of shame & repression. Sexuality is surrounded by shame, repression and prohibition. The opening two lines set up the opposition between ‘then’ and now’, Blake’s views of the established church in the poem are viewed negatively, the speaker returning to the “Garden of love” who comes to a sight he or she has “never” seen before, the simplicity of the language creates a sense of disbelief. This new chapel “built in the midst” has taken over the garden that was once full of “sweet flowers”. The effect of the metaphor, the speaker “used to play on the green” evokes another opposition between freedom & time, the word “play” associates with childhood, a common theme used by Blake, to express ideas of freedom and joy throughout his poetry. The “green” refers to the grass, illustrating and carries connotations of innocence and fertility. Blake develops its critique of organised religion; the speaker explains the “gates of this chapel were shut”. Blake interpretation of religion has made it into a prison, this line contradicts itself, Chapels are supposed to be welcoming places of worship that encourage people to come inside and pray, to commune with one another and with God. But this chapel is both foreboding and forbidding, its gates close to the community. Not only is the Chapel standing in the “midst” of the garden, blocking the physical space people used to play, but it is also denying them access to the very spiritual world that the Chapel is supposed to facilitate. The door of the Chapel displays a stark warning to anyone trying to enter. “Thou shalt not”, the use of caesura gives the words an air of authority and finality. The meter of line 6 adds to this sense of authority, the line feels overloaded due to its stresses, adding the characterisation of the Church as oppressive and overbearing. It creates an illusion of the Ten Commandments; the commandments comprise the negatives and positives. The Church emphasised the negatives: the punitive side of religion, imposed restrictions and instilled a sense of guilt in many uneducated people. Blake was highly critical of what he saw as a distortion of the Christian message of love and use of religion as a form of social control. “Thou shalt not” suggests the concept of private property, which is the source of all inequality and helplessness in society, the warning is emblematic of the Old testament God ‘Jehovah” who is seen as a prohibitive and vindictive tyrant. Lastly, the two final lines mark a significant shift in the poem, till now the speaker has been alone, contemplating what has happened to the Garden of love. However, now the “priests in black gowns” were now “walking their rounds”. The speaker expresses how there was a time of happiness and joy represented by the “sweet flowers” that used to fill the gardens, now “filled with graves”. The garden no longer represents the idyllic state of childhood, it now embodies the rules and restrictions that oppress children as they become adults. This sombre world of adulthood is represented by the priests in “black gowns”. These are the literal and

metaphorical gatekeepers of the Chapel and the type of organised religion it represents. The bleak description of the joyless and forbidding priests is Blake’s way of expressing his disgust at the clergy’s lack of compassion. However, the rhythm of this line is ironically, reminiscent of a nursery rhyme with the assonant rhyme of ‘gowns’ and ‘rounds. The priests “binding with briars”, through the use of alliteration suggests a kind of enclosure, human happiness represented by the concept of love, has been stifled by organised religion. Here, Blake is suggesting that he suffers, as Christ suffered but his suffering serves no higher purpose. The silent authority of the priests leaves the poem on a note of hopelessness, as though humankind may never again recover the former glory of the Garden of Love. The use of past tense and end-stops throughout the poem suggests that this may be a battle already lost....