📝The Garden of Love – William Blake
📌 Poet Bio:
William Blake appears again here due to his significant presence in IB syllabi. His poetry often critiques social and religious conventions, as in The Garden of Love, which comes from his collection Songs of Experience.
📌 Summary:
The speaker returns to a garden from childhood, only to find it transformed into a chapel, with strict rules and priests in black robes. The joyful, free space of innocence is now repressed by institutional religion. The poem mourns the loss of spiritual freedom and condemns the way religious doctrine can control and suppress natural human desires.
This poem critiques the Church’s restrictive power, portraying it as an entity that stifles love, joy, and innocence. Blake’s imagery is stark and emotionally charged, reinforcing his call for spiritual and emotional liberation.
📌 Themes: Repression, religion vs nature, lost innocence, spiritual control
📌 Style: Symbolism, contrast, stark imagery, simple yet powerful structure