Blake
In William Blake's "Garden of Love" from his "Songs of Experience" collection, he discusses how a church has been erected in the green he used to play in as a child. In doing so, Blake states that with maturity, one has the ability and insight to understand how the Church negatively intrudes on people's lives. For example, not only does the Church impose itself on the personal joys of people by using its power to dictate their lives by telling them what they can not do; it also separates itself from the common man, thus prohibiting the individual from building a personal relationship with God. In order to understand how the Church can have a negative influence on one's life, Blake discusses how as an adult, one loses the innocence and naivete that are present in childhood, and therefore gains the insight and ability to look at the Church with a critical eye. The readers assume that the speaker is an adult, as the words "play" (4) and "used to" (4) indicate that he was a child when he knew the village green. Although Blake doesn't say so, the readers don't imagine that he plays elsewhere, but instead assume he no longer plays, and therefore is no longer a child. Furthermore, when the speaker
This not only reveals Blake's disbelieving response to what happened to his green, but also effectively positions the reader to accept the themes of the intruding Church because the readers are just as emotionally shocked as the narrator, and therefore our sympathies are sided with him. Similarly, the second stanza has the same pattern as the first, for the lines still have eight syllables, and lines six and eight rhyme. Furthermore, through this unwelcoming message, Blake explains how the Church tells people what they cannot do, and in trying to dictate every aspect of their lives, is taking away their joys in the process. Therefore, the assumption that the narrator is an adult is mandatory, for the progression in awareness from childhood to maturity is necessary for one to comprehend how the Church can negatively influence one's life. Blake's reference to Christ, suggests that the Church sends the message that the individual should suffer as Christ did instead of complaining of one's problems, thus living a joyless life, yet hoping for a better afterlife in the process. These flowers are a symbol of his happiness, as he associated the green with his "joys and desires" (12). Blake more bluntly communicates the idea of how the Church robs people of their happiness, when he states that in the green "Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, / and binding with briars [his] thoughts and desires" (11, 12). The sounds of the words "Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds" (11) has a mechanical and methodical sound to it, which gives the readers a cold, continuous, unfeeling image that is related to the Church. However, by the third stanza, there is no consistency with the rest of the poem's rhythm, and the rhyme patterns are switched to two internal rhymes in the last lines. Furthermore, through its name "The Garden of Love," Blake gives the allusion that the green is an image of the Garden of Eden. " Thus, the flowers are representative of the joys in life, and the tombstones are representative of the fact that the Church is killing the pleasures in life with its rules. For example, Blake notes how as a child, he would "play" (4) in the green "that so many sweet flowers bore" (8). Likewise, in Blake's time, gardens were within walls and were privately owned, which symbolizes how this garden has an intimate meaning known only to him. Likewise, Blake writes "The Garden of Love" in the form of a poetic allegory, which allows him to "narrate one set of circumstances which signify a second order of correlated meanings" (Abrams, 6).
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Acceptance Essays
