The Garden of Love

“The Garden of Love” comes from the Experience section of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. The poems in Experience depict the restrictions the adult world imposes on children, whose innate urges are toward freedom, wonder, happiness, and love. Blake’s belief was that humans are born naturally loving God and provided with all that they need to be happy. His poetry shows how the unnatural restraints and dictums of the adult world quash those joys.

“The Garden of Love” is divided into two distinct periods of life, corresponding to childhood and adulthood. The role of the garden for the child is depicted in Lines 4, 8, and 10. These lines look back at how the garden was for the speaker as a child and the use of the word “play” (Line 4) confirms this. The child was free and happy in the garden. The “sweet flowers” (Line 8) of the garden in childhood reinforce the image of a place of beauty, and of nature in its free and abundant state.

In sharp contrast to the idyllic image of the garden in childhood, the adult perspective is of a dark, barren, restrictive place. This image is a