In William Blake’s Garden of Love,” published in 1794, the speaker shows that from day one of any person’s life, nothing remains uniform. Life is always in a state of change, disarray, and inconsistency.
The speaker tries to accomplish this by bringing you to a state of being and realization of the church, nature, and sentimental meaning. He thoroughly accomplishes this task by using many different poetic forms, such as symbolism, allusions, and imagery. The speaker’s main objective is to show life’s inevitable changes, that life, no matter how one may remember it, whether as a child, adult, or elder, will not remain constant.
In Blake’s poem Garden of Love,” the speaker shares a life experience. He describes a beautiful and pure garden that bore many sweet flowers (line 8) and how it provided sanctuary for him in his youth. The allusion to his Garden of Love is that of Edenic imagery. He sees his garden as a place of peace where nature, God, and he are one, similar to the Garden of Eden. Through this imagery, he shows that things evolve and mutate even from day one of human existence.
Individuals’ actions, which they may believe to be virtuous and moral, can actually cause devastation and destruction. As a result, the Gardens of Eden and Love are now extinct and untouchable for all. The speaker illustrates this by saying, And binding with briars my joys and desires” (line 12). The speaker feels that the equilibrium that once existed between them and all that lived in the garden is now nothing but a memory. It is a taboo feeling that used to flow freely through their veins, a retrospection of the way life used to be.
He continues his story by telling of his expedition back to his garden later in life, only to find out that his Garden of Love had tombstones where flowers should be” (10) and that it had been taken over by the church. This visual and internal image helps to represent death very straightforwardly. It represents the death of his feelings, the death of his peaceful environment, and the death of his and others’ lives.
This radical internal imagery remarkably aids in the feeling of pain and hurt that the speaker felt when he saw what had happened to his Garden of Love.” Furthermore, the “flowers” are a form of female sexual imagery. The flowers now replaced with graves have a very brutal and harsh connotation. The symbolic meaning of losing a loved one, or loved ones. His life is no longer filled with love, but with death.
Perhaps the death of his wife, mother, or female friend. Whatever the case may be, the speaker has lost someone of great and dear importance to him, and no one is there for him, not even the church. He states, And the gates of this Chapel were shut,” insinuating that the church had not helped or comforted him, but destroyed the equilibrium of peace that used to be present in this environment. In addition, the organized church did not help people of all types. It shows that religion is segregating and only concerned with the well-being of itself, not others. In line 12, “And binding with briars my joys and desires,” there is an allusion to Christ on the cross.
The briars, a type of thorny rose bush, represent the crown of thorns worn on Christ’s head. This somehow symbolizes that Christ’s love was now turning to death, and he had no one to turn to except his God for comfort. Like the speaker who finds joy in his garden, Christ can now only seek the compassion of his own God and nature.
