Garden Of Love is one of William Blake's poems from his "Songs of Experience and Innocence" era. I think the content of the poem has both innocence and experience portrayed throughout it. This piece consists of three stanzas and all have their own focal point and meaning, yet are tied in to give a whole picture. With the use of the word "I", I think that Blake may have been describing his personal feelings and perhaps even an experience he endured and wanted to tell. The imagery in this poem is strong, and yet can be perceived several ways. I think if someone has felt the pain that love can cause, that maybe their perception of the poem may be different from someone who has never felt the pain that is associated with love. The word Garden is used throughout the poem as well as the title, to me this relays an image of innocence and purity. The same is felt with his memory of his childhood "where I used to play on the green" pg.56. I thought that this line was another way of saying that "love is blind" I think maybe he was saying that he didn't notice things, like feelings and thoughts, the same as when he was an innocent child, but through experience and love he now sees life differently. The image of the chapel is a bold one, I say this because of the way that it portrays love and marriage. The church obviously held very strong values about marriage and he is portraying these through his poems. There is some rhyme scheme in each stanza (seen, green, door, bore, and briars, desires) pg. 56. I feel that some words have a deeper, more deceiving meaning, like the word midst. Midst, to me means hard to see, or in other terms, deceiving. Perhaps he was deceived by love, or experienced deceit in someway. The words "thou shall not" are a direct quote from the ten commandments, which were eternal sins. So is love a sin? Or is it what love can do to someone that makes it a sin? The fact that the chapel is in the garden of love, I got the sense that the garden is the euphoria that one feels in love and the chapel is the hardship that happens to one that is in love.
