The final of Article "The Garden of Love" by William Blake

Nurul Hidayati / 2012 1111 043
Farid A

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 turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

The garden of love poem is written by William Blake which is published in 1794 in Songs of Experiences, that poem is contained three stanzas. It is a simple poem that describe a symbol of belief. This poem is written in anger toward the Church. From the first Stanza, it can be seen the Garden of Love is a methapor for something that is important or having special meaning. it can be looked at third line “A Chapel was built in the midst”, from this utterance, the speaker try to describe his feeling how he was disappointed as something was destroyed or taken away from the speaker because of the Church , and continuing in the fourth line in first stanza “Where I used to play on the green”, it expresses the feeling that whatever in the Church where had taken away was something close by speaker.
In the second stanza, the speaker returned to the Garden of Love and he found out that the Chapel built there was closed, it is provides from the sentence “And the gates of  this Chapel was shut”  with the word “Thou shalt not” written over the door. The sentences means that “you shouldn’t do this or don’t do this”. In other word it is a place where people are not free to act. Those word could be speaker’s way of expressing to the many forbidden rules of the Anglican faith. Then “the Garden of Love “ is symbol of belief, there are religous thoughts behind those word like garden, and flower.
In the last stanza, the words are more harsh and rude like the word “grave, priests, black gown, and also briar. In these lines, the meaning is more negative which is more and more emotional and aggressive throught the poem. The sentence “Priests in Black gowns” means symbol of the orthodox Anglican Church in that era. The priest that is worn in black means the colour of sorrow. Then, the line “And binding by briars my joys and desires” means that the speaker suggests the life was being held back because of the Church. Using “briars” here means to confine any initiative toward freedom