William Blake’s “The Garden of Love” features three quatrains each with the rime scheme, ABCB; the final two lines of the third quatrain also contain internal rimes. Like many of Blake’s poems, this one is highly symbolic.
The speaker employs the common euphemism “love” to represent sexual lust. The poem portrays an adolescent rebellion against the spiritual caution of abusing of the sex instinct. Like his highly symbolic, “A Poison Tree,” this poem lacks genuine artistic achievement.
First Quatrain: “I went to the Garden of Love”
The speaker announces, “I went to the Garden of Love,” indicating that he journeyed to a place known as the “Garden of Love.” He has journeyed there before, but this time he sees that someone has built “a chapel” in the middle of the garden. He avoids naming who built the chapel by structuring his claim in passive voice: “A Chapel was built in the midst.”
The chapel is usurping the place “on the green” where the speaker “used to play.” The contrast between the meditative inference of a “chapel” and the speaker’s activity involving “play” demonstrates the speaker’s attitude. He is oriented toward activity, playfulness, lack of seriousness, and he is disturbed that someone has erected a building that symbolizes the opposite of his desires: instead of “play” the chapel represents stillness and quietness for worship. But this speaker has no interest in worship; he wants to “play.”
Second Quatrain: “And the gates of this Chapel were shut”
The second quatrain contains the unworkable claims that Blake habitually makes when concocting his parallel universe of symbols. The speaker notes that the “gates of this Chapel were shut.” The chapel would have a door—not “gates.” And sure enough, the speaker then claims that “over the door” was written “Thou shalt not.”
The speaker has conflated and confuses “gates” and “door” to the chapel, and he further confuses his narrative by then claiming that he “turned to the Garden of Love.” But he has already determined that a chapel had been erected the middle of the “Garden of Love.”
He is already observing the “Garden of Love” with its gates/door shut, yet he claims to turn to the Garden of Love, which indicates a different place from the one he is observing. He then says that this other location formerly had “many sweet flowers.” Quite logically, a “garden” would sport flowers, but the speaker has confused the location.
Third Quatrain: “And I saw it was filled with graves”
Apparently, this other “garden of love,” to which he turned after he looked away from the chapel, is “filled with graves.” And there are “tombstones where flowers should be.” The speaker then sees “Priests in black gowns.” They are “walking their rounds / And binding with briars my joys and desires.”
The speaker’s portrayal on the literal level is nonsense. The conflation of chapel and garden, of door and gates, of tombstones and flowers, that the priests are tying up the speaker/observer’s “joys and desires” with briars offer a kaleidoscope of gibberish.
Commentary
The poem represents a failed attempt to castigate a religion for admonishing humanity against the evils of overindulgence in the sex instinct. The speaker resents being told “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
He does not want to control his sexual urges, so he attempts to equate those base urges with the naturalness of a garden with sweet flowers, while equating the religion with a chapel that is shut and priests in black who would deprive him of his unbridled lust.
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