The Analysis of William Blake's 'The Garden of Love'

A man comes to a garden and sees it has been changed from what he saw it to be in his youth. Where once was the green grass and the nature with it?s beauty has dominated it?s environment, now stands a Chapel. He understands that the careless life he had when he was a child, now wasn?t full of happiness anymore. The church was now in the center of it: ?A Chapel was built in the midst?? and it was now in control of his life. It was the beginning and the end of everything that surrounded it.
He looks at the chapel and sees that it?s gates are closed and there is ? Thou shalt not? written on it?s door. The church doesn?t welcome anyone who doesn?t want to live by its rules. It doesn?t welcome those whose hearts are still full of joy of life. The church demands obeying of the rules it has made for us, and condemns everyone who wants live by their own terms. The Chapel is that church which when we grow older we notice to have more power on us than God itself.
So the man looks away from the Chapel and back into the garden of love. He still tries to seek for something that could be left from his youth but instead he ?saw it was filled with graves, and tombstones where flowers should be?. In the same place where innocence has bared it?s roots was the graveyard. His dreams that once flourished full with imagination lied now under the weight of the gray tombstones.
The man is in despair, when he sees what has he lost and what happened to him and the world around him. It?s too gloomy in this wrecked garden of his. It seems like his Garden is some form of dystopia, a place where all his fears became real. A place from where he doesn?t see a way out. He knows that he?s lost his youth forever and now when he is mature, that word doesn?t only mean that he has become wiser in apprehending the world that surrounded him. He had to face the reality when reaching adulthood; in it?s rawest form.
William Blake capitalizes the words Garden and Love, because their meaning are much more deeper than the simple interpretation of the word. Love with a capital letter is more to be taken like a First Love: the same love that was given to man from God. Not just feelings from certain person to another and definitely not a romantic love. Garden is a place in our hearts where we preserve that primal emotion. But Blake shows us that in time that emotion whiter and disappears from our Garden. So Garden reminds us of the Garden of Eden were everything was pure until the Evil came and corrupted the Good. That happens to almost every soul, so that there is no Good when a man has lost his purity.
However the poem is mainly about how the Chapel has changed the Garden. Especially that can be seen in the last line of the poem. ?And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briers my joys and desires?. Like some kind of creatures of the dark they surround us making everything bleak and unimaginative. When talking about briers, Blake probably refers to the same brier that Christ was wearing on the day of his crucifixion. So priests our encouraging us to live a joyless life so as Christ suffered for us we have to suffer too. But only what good can additional pain bring to our lives when already full of it?
Blake?s view on the church of those days isn?t the most pleasant one and for a reason. When he saw people getting poorer and poorer everywhere around him, he couldn?t understand the church getting even richer, when one of it?s most important purposes includes taking care of those who suffer. Instead of that the only thing that the church seemed to value is the love of power and money, and easiest way to get to them was walking the road that was build especially for them in the name of God. Many horrible deeds have been done under that name so it seemed to Blake that God have abandoned the church and in order to find Him we?ll have to seek for him somewhere else. For instance in those forgotten places where we have left our innocence. In our personal Garden of Love.