"Garden of Love" Explication
             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 naiveté 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 states that the garden "was filled with graves and tombstones" (9, 10) which bind his "thoughts and desires" (12), the readers realize that only a person of maturity would utter such words, as he or she would have the experience and knowledge to
             understand death and emotion. 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. For example, when the speaker looks to the garden and away from the church in the seventh line, he is trying to...