essay about the garden of love

The Garden of Love Summary & Analysis by William Blake

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

"The Garden of Love" is a poem by English Romantic visionary William Blake. Blake was devoutly religious, but he had some major disagreements with the organized religion of his day. The poem expresses this, arguing that religion should be about love, freedom, and joy—not rules and restrictions. The poem is part of his famous collection Songs of Innocence and Experience , which was first published in 1789.

• Read the full text of “The Garden of Love”

The Full Text of “The Garden of Love”

1 I went to the Garden of Love, 

2 And saw what I never had seen: 

3 A Chapel was built in the midst, 

4 Where I used to play on the green. 

5 And the gates of this Chapel were shut, 

6 And Thou shalt not. writ over the door; 

7 So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, 

8 That so many sweet flowers bore. 

9 And I saw it was filled with graves, 

10 And tomb-stones where flowers should be: 

11 And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, 

12 And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

“The Garden of Love” Summary

“the garden of love” themes.

Love vs. Organized Religion

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Childhood vs. Adulthood

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “the garden of love”.

I went to the Garden of Love,  And saw what I never had seen:  A Chapel was built in the midst,  Where I used to play on the green. 

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,  And Thou shalt not. writ over the door; 

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,  That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves,  And tomb-stones where flowers should be: 

Lines 11-12

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,  And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

“The Garden of Love” Symbols

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Graves and Tombstones

“the garden of love” poetic devices & figurative language.

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Alliteration

Polysyndeton, end-stopped line, “the garden of love” vocabulary.

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Thou shalt not
• See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Garden of Love”

Rhyme scheme, “the garden of love” speaker, “the garden of love” setting, literary and historical context of “the garden of love”, more “the garden of love” resources, external resources.

Illustration and Other Poems — A resource from the Tate organization, which holds a large collection of Blake originals. Here the poem can be seen in its original illustrated form.

Blake's Radicalism — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's radicalism.

Blake's Visions — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's religious visions.

Full Text of Songs of Innocence and Experience — Various formats for the full text in which "The Garden of Love" is collected.

A Reading by Allen Ginsberg — Beat poet Allen Ginsberg reads the poem.

LitCharts on Other Poems by William Blake

Ah! Sun-flower

A Poison Tree

Earth's Answer

Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)

Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence)

Infant Sorrow

Introduction (Songs of Innocence)

Nurse's Song (Songs of Experience)

Nurse's Song (Songs of Innocence)

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)

The Clod and the Pebble

The Divine Image

The Ecchoing Green

The Human Abstract

The Little Black Boy

The Little Vagabond

The School Boy

The Sick Rose

To the Evening Star

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

A Summary and Analysis of William Blake’s ‘The Garden of Love’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Many of William Blake’s greatest poems are written in clear and simple language, using the quatrain form which faintly summons the ballad metre used in popular oral poetry. But some of his poetry, being allegorical and symbolic in nature, requires some careful close reading and textual analysis. ‘The Garden of Love’ is one such example. What is this poem about?

I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.

In summary, Blake’s speaker goes into the Garden of Love and finds a chapel built on the spot where he used to play as a child. The gates of the chapel are shut, and commandments and prohibitions are written over the door. The garden has become a graveyard, its flowers replaced by tombstones. This idea of love starting out as a land of liberty and promise but ending up a world of death and restriction is expressed very powerfully through the image of the garden.

Gardens in poetry often tempt us to recall the first biblical garden, the Garden of Eden, and the paradise which Adam and Eve lost when they succumbed to temptation and tasted the forbidden fruit.

And ‘The Garden of Love’ is a poem that reflects William Blake’s detestation of organised religion. Blake was a deeply spiritual artist and poet, but he disliked the institutions associated with religion, and this can be seen clearly in this poem, where the garden of love, formerly associated with play and carefree childhood, is now the site of a ‘Chapel’: a physical embodiment of the Church.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not writ over the door; So I turn’d to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore.

This is no welcoming chapel, for the gates are shut (perhaps inspiring Christina Rossetti to write her great poem on a similar theme, ‘Shut Out’ ), and the chapel is marked by commandments forbidding certain things (‘Thou shalt not’ recalling the famous Ten Commandments from the Old Testament).

And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

But even the garden which surrounds this chapel has changed, and has become a graveyard: death has replaced life, as tomb-stones have supplanted flowers in the ground.

Then, a final image of the Church’s restrictive power: in the final couplet, where for the first time we get internal rhyme (gowns/rounds, briars/desires) and the tetrameter which had held sway until now gives way to the longer pentameter (leading to a sense of collapse or deflation, rather than welcome expansiveness), the priests are further doling out commandments, by restricting the poet’s ‘joys and desires’.

The message of ‘The Garden of Love’ appears to be fairly clear, therefore: organised religion is anathema to love, and is about imposing control and restrictions on us, killing our happiness and curbing our natural desires and wishes. The institutions of religion, unlike the joyousness of religious belief itself, turn the world from a garden (symbolising growth and life) into a grave (symbolising death and decay).

Blake was by no means the first writer to criticise organised religion and argue that it fell short of the ideals it purported to espouse – we find many Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers, such as Thomas Paine in his brilliant  The Age of Reason , propounding such a viewpoint – but to put it in such vividly symbolic and clear terms is a testament to Blake’s gift as a poet.

But is the poem’s meaning as straightforward as this analysis suggests? Perhaps not. In his excellent study of Blake’s poetry, Blake’s Contrary States: The ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ as Dramatic Poems , D. G. Gillham observes that the fault may lie as much within the speaker himself as it does in organised religion.

Gillham suggests that a religious conversion (robbing the speaker of his enjoyment of nature, which has become tainted when viewed from a religious perspective) or sexual disenchantment may be at the root of the speaker’s attack on religion in this poem.

‘In short, the speaker is a fool or a hypocrite,’ Gillham adds, noting that whilst the speaker’s criticism of the Church may hold some truth, his ‘distorted’ view of the Garden of Love puts the blame back on himself as much as on outside forces.

‘The Garden of Love’ and ‘A Poison Tree’

Indeed, in the same book Gillham makes a similar argument about a number of other Blake poems, such as ‘A Poison Tree’: in that poem, the speaker grows a poisoned apple with which to tempt his foe, and is victorious when his enemy steals into his garden to eat the deadly fruit.

But the speaker, Blake suggests, has also been ‘poisoned’ or corrupted by the act of deceiving his foe, because he resorted to dishonest and underhand tactics to vanquish him. In this respect, we might view the two poems as offering a productive dialogue about the nature of self versus other. Of course, in both poems, Blake uses the (richly symbolic) landscape of the garden to present his idea. We have analysed ‘A Poison Tree’ here .

So, perhaps the speaker of ‘The Garden of Love’ is not exactly beyond reproach himself. What evidence is there in the poem for such an interpretation? The idea that the speaker has undergone some late religious conversion is supported by the poem’s opening stanza:

‘I went to the Garden of Love, / And saw what I never had seen’: in other words, he had never noticed the Chapel there before. The wording of the third line (‘A Chapel was built in the midst ’) allows for the possibility that the Chapel has always been there, and it is merely the speaker’s blinkered vision that prevented him from noticing it. This suggests a religious conversion.

What this also implies is that the ‘Garden of Love’ is a mental, symbolic garden, where a Chapel has both been there all the time and not been there; where the speaker has been able to play on the green even though a Chapel is constructed there, a structure he has managed to ignore until now. And as Gillham observes, if the Garden is of the mind, and the Chapel that despoils it is also of the mind, the corruption stems from the speaker’s own mental attitude rather than an external reality.

Or, to put it another way, it is the mental and moral views we bring to something that either taint it or brighten it. Someone who worshipped a religion that taught the worshipper to be suspicious of arcs of different colours would see little beauty in a rainbow!

A note on metre: like many Blake poems, ‘The Garden of Love’ is written in quatrains (rhymed, in this case,  abcb , although the final two lines of the final stanza depart from this and instead use internal rhyme on  gowns  and rounds and  briars and desires ), but instead of using tetrameter (i.e. four feet per line), Blake uses a more variable trimeter rhythm. This means there are three main stresses per line, rather than four:

I WENT / to the GAR- / den of LOVE, And SAW / what I NE- / ver had SEEN: A CHA- / pel was BUILT / in the MIDST, Where I USED / to PLAY / on the GREEN.

We have marked the breaks between each foot with a / mark. As you can see, the main pattern in each line (consistent in the first three lines) is to have a two-syllable foot (e.g. ‘And SAW’) followed by two three-syllable feet.

This means we can identify the basic ground-plan of the poem’s metre as something called  anapaestic trimeter , with iambic substitutions. In other words, in each of those first three lines we have an iamb (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed) and then a pair of anapaests (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed).

As suggested above, the Christina Rossetti poem ‘Shut Out’ (1862) provides a neat complement to Blake’s poem, and may even have been written with it in mind. Like ‘The Garden of Love’, it is written in simple quatrains, albeit with a different rhyme scheme. You can read Rossetti’s poem, and our analysis of it, here .

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6 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of William Blake’s ‘The Garden of Love’”

“The Garden of Love” deserves to be one of the most memorable short lyrics in the English language. A favorite Blake lyric of Allen Ginsberg’s by the way.

And thanks for pointing us to the Christina Rossetti poem, new to me, which does seem to be a complementary expression reflecting in some part on the Blake.

And it wasn’t just organised religion Blake railed against; it was the whole of society!. He called it eternal Death or Ulro and put the ‘blame’ on Single Vision. To simplify his complex mythology he saw humankind as in a fallen state, largely because we have forgotten our ‘divinity’ and relied on the rationalising mind. Imagination and self-inquiry are necessary to release ourselves from Urizen’s manacles! It is sobering to think that things have got worse since his days. In many ways he predicted the wage-slave situation most of us find ourselves in today. And what about mechanisation/consumerism and the devaluing of the human spirit? I’ve even been told there are robot servants in Japan today!

Nice one, Mr Blake.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

Love this poem. It nails it on the head, the corruption of organised religion. When you look at how most religions end up, you have to agree with Blake!

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The Garden of Love

By William Blake

‘The Garden of Love’ is the antithesis to The Echoing Green of Innocence, as it uses the same setting and rhythm to stress the ugly contrast.

William Blake

Nationality: English

Initially unrecognized, William Blake posthumously emerged as a key Romantic poet.

Poem Analyzed by Dharmender Kumar

Degrees in English Literature, Mass Communication, and Law

Common in Blake’s poetry , he firmly believed that love cannot be sanctified by religion. The negative commandments of the Old Testament, ‘Thou Shall Not’ could not enshrine the most positive creative force on earth. For Blake, sexuality and instinct are holy, the world of institutionalized religion turns this instinct into imprisonment and engenders hypocrisy. Those rules, which forbid the celebration of the body, kill life itself.

Here, in ‘ The Garden of Love ‘, the poet rebels against the idea of original sin. Man was expelled for eating of the fruit of knowledge and, cast out of Eden, was shamed by sexuality. In the poem, the poet subverts orthodoxy and the patriarchal authority figures of the Nobodaddy and God and his Priests. The Dissenting tradition to which Blake’s family belonged believed in “inner light” and “the kingdom within”. Moral laws without any rationale are not to be obeyed. In ‘The Garden Love’, interfering priesthood and the powers of prohibition blight innocent affections. The Church of Experiences like the King and State relies on such powers to ensure obedience. A contemporary reference linked with the poem is that of the Marriage Act of 1753, passed by Lord Hardwicke. These Acts stipulated that all marriages had to be solemnized according to the rules of the Church of England in the Parish Church of one of the parties in the presence of a clergyman and two witnesses.

With the loss of rural society and extended families in villages, this legislation was perhaps necessary, especially in urban centers. However, for Blake, this was equal to curbing individual freedom. For him, each prohibition created repression, therefore in ‘The Garden of Love ,’ we see a bleak, unproductive landscape of unfulfilled yearning where sterile resentment, fear, guilt, and joylessness replace the open freedom of innocence.

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The Garden of Love  Analysis

I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.

The twelve lines of William Blake’s poem ‘The Garden of Love’ belong to the state of Experience that characterizes the present-day world. Experience stands in total contrast to the state of Innocence.

The poet revisited the Garden of Love, an open green piece of land where he used to play with boys and girls together. He was dismayed to see there what he had never seen earlier. He found that in the green open place, a Chapel (church) had been erected in the middle of the place where boys and girls together used to play. Institutionalized religion thus destroyed the Garden of Love. In the world of Experience, the harmony between man and nature no longer existed. Earlier the Garden of Love seemed to be in a state of idyllic beauty, but the present-day scenario of the place is one of utter sadness and gloom.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not. writ over the door; So I turn’d to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore.

In the second stanza , the poet gives a further description of the place of his revisit. The gates of the Chapel were closed. And the closed-door had got written on it ‘Thou Shalt Not.’ So, the visitor (the poet) turned his attention to the place of the Garden of Love where it used to bloom a number of flowers but found them missing. In fact, the very idea of the chapel and the negative “Thou Shalt Not” suggests the concept of private property, which is the source of all inequality and helplessness in society. The gate is closed to the passerby and on it is inscribed the warning ‘Thou Shalt Not’. The warning is emblematic of the classic dictum of the Old Testament God-Jehovah who is seen as a prohibitive and a vindictive tyrant.

Stanza Three

And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

The lines of the third stanza depict the adverse changes that have enveloped the Garden of Love during the present time. The Garden portrays an aura of total unease and misery. At present, the garden seems to be filled with graves and tombstones which are images of death, and so horrendous and undesirable. Even the priests wrapped in black gowns forebode an ill-omen and an act of mourning and despair. The priests depict a total official manner devoid of any compassion or even forgiveness. This seems to be the basic factor that binds the narrator ’s desires and joy.

It could be that earlier, the Garden presented the state of innocence where an environment of gaiety and mirth prevailed and everybody could enter the place without any discrimination whatsoever. But now it seems that the Garden has been lent or sold out to a private individual who exerts the sole authority and hence, the others are devoid of any joyous moment. The present-day scene looks quite dismal where even such a simple resort as the garden is unable to escape the evils of industrialization and subsequent phenomenon of private ownership.

Personal Comments

‘The Garden of Love’ is another allegorical poem satirical of the Church. It is an attack on the morality which puts restrictions on sexual love. The speaker finds that a great change has come over the Garden of Love. He finds that a field of activities that should be spontaneously enjoyed has been made ugly by the interference of religious notions which insist on man’s guilt and shame. The Church has spoiled the beauty and natural vigor of the pleasures which were once there to be enjoyed and substituted reminders of man’s morality and eventual corruption, which are consequences of sin.

In ‘The Garden of Love ,’ there is a strong condemnation of the Church in its approach to sexual matters, and it is difficult not to agree with the attack made by the poet.

In all religion, there is a tendency to elevate the spiritual at the expense of the physical, and in all religions there are sects which take this tendency to an extreme, viewing the promptings of the body as low, especially the sexual urge. The effect poem falls on this aspect as well as on the prohibitions imposed by the “Chapel”. “Thou Shalt Not” does more than restrict activity: it alters the complications of doubt and perplexity. The damage done by the “briars” is self-imposed once they have been placed.

The speaker here relates a personal history: he talks of “my joys and desires” as being “bound”. He has now reached a position where he can see that what has been done to him was an evil. The tone of the poem is indignant, and the “priests in black gowns” are sinister figures. The obvious solution is to remove the evil by changing his notions about sexual matters and so liberating himself from the prohibitions imposed by the Chapel. But it may be too late for that.

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Excellent analysis! I love this website – it has greatly helped me with my university work. Always reliable with high quality analysis. My only comment is that the author’s personal note at the end was a bit off-putting. I think the beauty of this website is that it’s objective, but the personal note about the condemnation of the church was a bit uncalled for. That said, we all have freedom of speech and I love that we get to hear the writer’s insight. Going forward though, I think this site would benefit a lot from a more objective stance. Just a thought I had and think might be helpful for you going forward 🙂

Thank you for your feedback. Generally, we tend to be quite neutral. However, we do allow our writer’s a certain level of expression. I am glad you enjoy our articles.

Do you believe that this could have been a metaphorical garden? Or more literally. I feel that in this era of time it could have been quite literal because of different religious reformations that had just finished recently, and even his hatred of organized religion despite still being Christian.

Perhaps both! Blake was an ingenious poet. Even now when I read his poems I still find techniques that I didn’t spot when I was younger.

what are the themes in this poem,please someone tell me

Morality and religion.

A great insight and a joy to read. Very useful

That’s lovely feedback. Thank you.

That does explain a lot.

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Kumar, Dharmender. "The Garden of Love by William Blake". Poem Analysis , https://poemanalysis.com/william-blake/the-garden-of-love/ . Accessed 9 July 2024.

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The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door; So I turn’d to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Summary of The Garden of Love

Analysis of literary devices used in “the garden of love”.

“ And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds.”

Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in “The Garden of Love”

Quotes to be used.

“I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.”

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The Garden of Love by William Blake

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I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not. writ over the door; So I turn’d to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Summary and Analysis

The three short stanzas, lyrical in movement describe the sense of shock on the mind of a child whose experience of spontaneous affinity with nature is overturned when he discovers an encroachment in the form of a “chapel”. The chapel symbolizes authority, control and religious regimentation which is an aversion to the child who is essentially an embodiment of freedom as well as joy. The first stanza conveys through simple direct lines the change that has been imposed upon the Garden. The syntax is in harmony with the subjective narrative of a child. In his innocence which cannot understand how the “green” where he used to play can undergo a change which is quite drastic he says, “And saw that I never had seen;” The Garden which symbolizes harmony, peace and love has been deprived of what the child treasured.

The second stanza contains an anti-religion attitude, typical of Blake envisioned through the mind of a child. The chapel thus represents an exclusion stated directly simply through, the line “And the Gates of this Chapel were thus”. The second line of this stanza denotes the proscriptive form of the religion which the Chapel espouses. The Child’s mind, which in its natural state of innocence is magnanimous, inclusive and extensive cannot understand commands of denial, but painfully obeys the command which to him means, “you shall not enter the chapel”. So he turns towards the natural world of plants and flowers which in his mind are splendid in their beauty.

The third stanza conveys a sense of yet another disappointment and betrayal. Instead of the sweet smelling flowers, symbols of life and rejuvenation, the child is confronted with symbols of death and gloom, because what he sees is “graves” and “tomb-stones”. The imagery of death is carried over to religion through the reference to “Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds”. However, the “death” brought about by conventional religion does not end at the level of the destruction of the Garden, but it extends to the painful experience evoked in the last, alliterative thudding line, “And binding with briars my joys and desires”. The poem, like most poems of Blake operates on two levels – the obvious meaning and the implied meaning – At the first level, the poem is a description of encroachment. At the other level it is a strong critique of institutionalized religion.

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The Garden of Love

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Bard Goes Country: A Discussion of Allen Ginsberg Singing Blake's 'The Garden of Love'

Hosted by Al Filreis and featuring poets Charles Bernstein, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Jessica Lowenthal.

Ah! Sun-flower

Auguries of innocence, the book of thel, the chimney sweeper: a little black thing among the snow, the chimney sweeper: when my mother died i was very young.

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Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of...

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The Garden of Love, William Blake: Summary & Analysis

In "The Garden of Love" by William Blake, the poet presents a critique of institutionalized religion and its impact on human emotions, desires, and natural instincts. Through vivid imagery and symbolism, Blake explores the contrast between the sacred and the profane, highlighting how religious dogma can suppress individual expression and the natural human experience of love and joy.

The Garden of Love by William Blake

I laid me down upon a bank, Where Love lay sleeping; I heard among the rushes dank Weeping, weeping. Then I went to the heath and the wild, To the thistles and thorns of the waste; And they told me how they were beguiled, Driven out, and compelled to the chaste. I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen; A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut And ‘‘Thou shalt not,’’ writ over the door; So I turned to the Garden of Love That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tombstones where flowers should be; And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Critical Analysis

"The Garden of Love" explores the conflict between the natural human emotions, desires, and joy represented by the garden and the restrictive dogma imposed by institutionalized religion symbolized by the chapel. The poem's narrator initially seeks love and companionship in the garden, where Love is sleeping. However, the mournful weeping heard among the rushes suggests that love and joy have been repressed or stifled.

The shift to the heath and the wild signifies a return to nature and instinctual desires. The thistles and thorns that were once symbols of wild passion and vitality have been transformed by religious control into "chaste" and constrained elements.

The Garden of Love, once a place of playful innocence and joy, has now been transformed by the presence of a chapel. The closed gates and the injunction "Thou shalt not" suggest the restrictive nature of religious rules that prohibit natural human impulses and emotions.

The revelation that the garden is now filled with graves and tombstones, with priests in black gowns "binding with briars" the narrator's "joys and desires," signifies the stifling effect of religious dogma on human experience. The briars can be interpreted as symbols of the barriers erected by religion against natural human emotions and desires.

Themes of the Poem

• Religion and Repression: The poem explores how institutionalized religion can suppress human emotions, desires, and natural instincts.
• Nature and Freedom: The heath and the wild represent nature and instinctual desires, contrasting with the controlled environment of the religious chapel.
• Loss of Innocence: The transformation of the garden into a place of graves and tombstones reflects the loss of innocence and natural joy due to religious repression.

Stylistic Analysis

• Symbolism: The garden, chapel, thistles, and briars all serve as powerful symbols to convey the themes of the poem.
• Imagery: The poem's imagery of the garden, chapel, and graves creates vivid mental pictures that contribute to its impact.

Attitudes/Feelings

• Disillusionment: The narrator's shift from a hopeful exploration of the garden to the realization of its transformation reflects a sense of disillusionment and loss.
• Resistance: The narrator's experience of the chapel's closed gates and prohibitive message signifies a feeling of resistance against religious restrictions.
• Contrast: The poem uses contrasting elements—the garden and the chapel, thistles and chaste, joy and graves—to emphasize the central themes.
• Symbolic Language: The use of symbols like the garden and chapel adds depth and layers of meaning to the poem's exploration of religion and human emotions.

Sound Devices

• Rhyme Scheme: The poem follows an AABBCC rhyme scheme, contributing to its rhythmic and musical quality.

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The Garden of Love

17 pages • 34 minutes read

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Analysis: “The Garden Of Love”

A quick analysis of “The Garden of Love” reveals the following: “The green” (Line 4) refers to the idea of the village green, the grassy area in the middle of a village where social events like festivals took place, which was a common area for free public use. Children would have played safely and innocently in such a spot. In addition, traditionally, churches and chapels in England have gardens around them, which may be tended or left to grow wild. These church gardens also contain the burial grounds for the local population, but there are often still empty areas.

The three words “Thou shalt not” (Line 6) in the second stanza are the beginning of several of the Ten Commandments found in the Christian Old Testament, such as “Thou shalt not kill.” They are moral imperatives, meaning, “You must not.” The speaker turns away from the door, toward the garden , but finds that it no longer contains the “sweet flowers” that it previously “bore” or contained (Line 8).

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The Garden of Love by William Blake, an analysis

Are you looking for a poem analysis of The Garden of Love By William Blake? Great, we have the best analysis you are going to find anywhere.

The Garden of Love Analysis: Meter and Rhyme

Any Analysis of The Garden of Love by William Blake should note the following point about meter and rhyme:

• The poem is made of three quatrains, that is, three stanzas of four lines each.
• Almost every line in the poem is either eight or nine syllables until the last two lines, which are ten syllables.
• Although the count doesn’t quite match at times, all lines of the poem, except the last two are roughly in anapestic trimeter. The last two lines then form a tetrameter.
• The rhyme scheme of the first two stanzas is ABCB. In other words, only the second and fourth line rhymes.
• Although no lines in the third stanza rhyme, there is internal rhymes in the last two lines. “Gowns” nearly rhymes with “rounds,” and “briars” with “desires.”
• The first rhyme in the poem makes use of a long E sound. Note that when you make a long E, you have to smile. The poem starts out almost upbeat as it talks about childhood.
• The second rhyme in the poem, is the oor-sound. This is a dour sound and conveys the beginnings of distress.
• The penultimate line of the poem makes use of a sound that expresses pain, as when you say “ow!”
• The final rhyme in the last line calls to mind both ire and fire and conveys anger.

Our analysis of The Garden of Love by William Blake reveals to us that the meter grows continuously grows more complex and somber, as do the rhymes. This communicates William Blakes growing distress with what has happened to his innocent garden. We’ll discuss this more below.

The Garden of Love Analysis: the First Stanza

When we read the above lines in The Garden of Love by William Blake, we think of the garden of Eden. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lived in complete innocence. They possessed the innocence of children. They had no guilt over either love or sex.

We think that William Blake regarded the organized Church, in this case, as something akin to Satan. The Chapel appears in the garden as something evil. Consider that a chapel is completely unnatural. It’s shape is squarish and triangular, unlike the natural roundness of nature. In this setting, the Chapel is artificial, forced, and out of place.

In our analysis, we feel this conveys William Blakes deep antipathy toward organized religion. William Blake was deeply religious, but he liked neither the church of England nor any type of organized religion. He felt the Church, in general, had perverted the real meaning of Christ’s love.

The Garden of Love Analysis: the Second Stanza

We find the lines of the second stanza of The Garden of Love by William Blake to be particularly poignant. First, note that entry has been barred. While once it was permissible to enter and leave the garden freely, access is now controlled by a gate keeper. One cannot freely enjoy pleasure without permission from the Church.

Our analysis must make note of the horrible “thou shalt not.” We feel this is in reference to free love. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve freely loved one another without any sense of shame. While in the original story of Eden eating the fruit of the tree gives Adam and Eve knowledge, in this case, the fall is a bit different. The Church in its attempt at creating control seems to outright destroy love. The church forbids it.

Why does the organized church do this? Is it because the church, itself, is Satan? These are good questions for the reader to consider, and our analysis must stop short of answering these questions.

The Garden of Love Analysis: the Third Stanza

The important point for our analysis of The Garden of Love by William Blake is to note that in the third stanza, death comes into the picture.

When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit in the garden of Eden, they gained knowledge not only of carnal relations but death. There something almost poetic in learning about procreation and death simultaneously. Procreation becomes a duty so that death can be avoided.

We stop loving just to spontaneously love, and we then procreate to avoid death, which we fear. Spontaneous love is replaced with moral responsibility and fear. William Blake feels this is wrong, and that the Church incorrectly is instilling these ideas. He feels the Church instills these values mostly for political control.

Blake wants to suggest that love is sufficient for us, and we are happier and better off when we simply love. We should not fear death, and then procreate solely out of moral responsibility. The Church has perverted the real Christian message, and Blake wants to reveal the true message to us in his poem.

The Garden of Love Analysis: Summary

We find The Garden of Love by William Blake to be a wonderful poem. We feel the poem recreates the garden of Eden story, and places the blame for the fall squarely on man’s need to control his environment in fear of death. Blake sees the Church as an evil organization instilling the wrong values in people. Blake wants to urge us to let go of our fears, and to again, trust in love as our guiding principle. In this case, Blake wants us to let go of organized religion, because he feels it is an impediment to our ability to freely love.

We hope you enjoyed our analysis of The Garden of Love by William Blake. Don’t forget to subscribe to our poetry newsletter for future great posts!

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William Blake

The garden of love.

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Other works by William Blake...

O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed

Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, and Future, s… Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walk’d among the ancient tree…

LEAVE, O leave me to my sorrows… Here I’ll sit and fade away, Till I’m nothing but a spirit, And I lose this form of clay. Then if chance along this forest

`I die, I die!' the Mother said, `My children die for lack of bread… What more has the merciless tyrant… The Monk sat down on the stony be… The blood red ran from the Grey M…

THERE’S Doctor Clash, And Signor Falalasole, O they sweep in the cash Into their purse hole! Fa me la sol, La me fa sol!

Children of the future age, Reading this indignant page, Know that in a former time Love, sweet love, was thought a cr… In the age of gold,

The daughters of Mne Seraphim led… All but the youngest; she in palen… To fade away like morning beauty f… Down by the river of Adona her so… And thus her gentle lamentation fa…

Earth rais’d up her head From the darkness dread and drear. Her light fled, Stony dread! And her locks cover’d with grey de…

1st Vo. WANT Matches? 2nd Vo. Yes! Yes! Yes! 1st Vo. Want Matches? 2nd Vo. No! 1st Vo. Want Matches?

I wonder whether the girls are mad… And I wonder whether they mean to… And I wonder if William Bond wil… For assuredly he is very ill. He went to church in a May mornin…

Once a dream did weave a shade O’er my angel—guarded bed, That an emmet lost its way Where on grass methought I lay. Troubled, wildered and forlorn,

‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, their i… The children walking two and two,… Grey headed beadles walk’d before,… Till into the high dome of Paul’s… Oh what a multitude they seem’d, t…

JUSTICE hath heaved a sword to plunge in Albion’s breast; for Albion’s sins are crimson dy’d, and the red scourge follows her desolate sons. Then Patriot rose; full oft did Patriot rise...

TO be or not to be Of great capacity, Like Sir Isaac Newton, Or Locke, or Doctor South, Or Sherlock upon Death—

The modest Rose puts forth a thor… The humble sheep a threat’ning hor… While the Lily white shall in lov… Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her…

The Garden of Love

Back to: William Blake Poems Summary

Table of Contents

Introduction

In the poem The Garden of Love , William Blake explains how the Church has taken away the happiness of the people by imposing a lot of restrictions on their freedom and the things which used to comfort them.

Blake uses the first-person perspective to share his experience as a child when he used to play in the garden of love. But after growing up, when he returned back, he found that the garden of love was no more. Instead, there was a Church which forbade people from entering there. Moreover, there were graves everywhere.

The poem has been divided into three stanzas having four lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABCB DEFE GHIJ.

The Garden of Love Poem Summary

He sees that a Chapel (worship house of Christians) is built in the middle of the green garden where he used to play when he was young. The first stanza depicts the poet’s dissatisfaction with the religion and the places of worship.

Blake was a Romantic Poet who firmly believed in God. However, that didn’t make him to blindly follow religion and religious practices. Instead, he was highly critical of the clergy who used to befool people in the name of religion and extract money from them. Not only this, but they also put restrictions on them thus discouraging them from free and critical thinking.

In these lines, the poet says that the Chruch was built right in the middle of the garden of love. If we go deeper into the words, we find that the poet is talking about the doctrines which were put forward by the clergy. They forbade the people from enjoying their lives and made them bow before them.

This stanza continues from the second one. The poet sees that the garden of love is filled with graves and tombstones where once the flowers used to bloom. Moreover, priests were walking around in black gowns (long elegant dress) in that garden who according to the poet had bound or trapped his joys and desires .

In this stanza, the poet uses some dark images to depict the negativity of religion. Graves, tombstones and black gowns are all dark images which depict sorrow, grief, death and despair. All these images show how religion has taken away the happiness of humans. It is not preaching about God but its own selfish desires on the cost of people’s happiness.

Video Summary

The Explication of “The Garden of Love” by William Blake

The poem “The Garden of Love” by William Blake dramatizes the conflict between official religion and human instincts and emotions, such as love and sexuality. The feeling of love is treated as a path to God, while the institutionalized Christian church as an obstacle for spirituality due to its hostility to natural human feelings. Love and sexuality are understood as more than mere elements of human relationships; they are sanctified. Therefore, the poem’s theme is the conflict of the spirituality determined by the church, and those dictated by the intuition. The irony of the situation appears in a paradoxical juxtaposition of the religion that prevents finding God, and prohibited human feelings as a path to Him.

In the poem, the speaker visits the garden, where he used to play in his childhood. He tries to find “sweet flowers” (8) of the past; however, there are only graves and tombstones around. The reason for it is the Chapel that was built in the middle of the garden. Now, the garden is no more full of “joys and desires” (12) but a hostile, dark place.

The poem describes a setting that may be understood literally and figuratively. The place could be interpreted as an inner space, where the happiness turned into disharmony. A system of symbols, allusions, and metaphors is used in the poem to construct this meaning:

• The Garden of Love is a central symbol of the poem. It appears in the title, representing an inner space of harmony, joy, and freedom. The garden is an allusion to the biblical Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lived without knowing shame and restrictions.
• Green (garden) – a symbol of freedom and life;
• Black (gowns) – a killing of life by formal restrictions.
• Chapel – may refer to a formal church.
• Priests – except its primary sense, may have a connotation, being understood as an inner mentor and judge;
• “Binding with briars my joys and desires” is a metaphor that expresses how restrictions disrupted the speaker’s happiness.

There is a distinct rhythm, although it changes during the poem. The poem’s meter is mostly amphibrachic trimeter in the first stanza, anapestic trimeter in the second and the first half of the third stanzas. However, it breaks in the last two lines where amphibrachic tetrameter with missing last syllables appears. The rhyme structure of the first and second stanzas is ABCB; in the third one, it changes to ABCD with internal rhymes in lines 11-12. Anaphora is used in the third stanza, with repetition of “and” at the beginning of each line. There are no alliteration, consonance, or assonance examples in the poem.

The poem’s diction is straightforward; bi- and mono-syllabic words are often used to attain this simplicity. It could be perceived as a contemplation rather than formal and structured speech, addressed to the audience. The lines 11-12 are particularly important, as they break the established in the first two stanzas syntax structure by its extended length. The punctuation of line 6 is also remarkable, as full stop after “Thou shalt not.” emphasizes the certainty and inevitability of the restriction, which results in loss of freedom. The lyrical expression is darkened by elegiac mood, representing the loss of freedom of feelings and death of happiness and inner harmony. Overall, the poem’s tone is contemplative, full of sorrow and despair.

Blake, William. “The Poem of Love.” The Norton Introduction to Literature . Shorter 13th edition, edited by Kelly J. Mays, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019, p. 1061.

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The Analysis of William Blake's 'The Garden of Love'

A simple view on the poem's imagery combined with Blake's view's on the world.

A man comes to a garden and sees it has been changed from what he saw it to be in his youth. Where once was the green grass and the nature with it?s beauty has dominated it?s environment, now stands a Chapel. He understands that the careless life he had when he was a child, now wasn?t full of happiness anymore. The church was now in the center of it: ?A Chapel was built in the midst?? and it was now in control of his life. It was the beginning and the end of everything that surrounded it. He looks at the chapel and sees that it?s gates are closed and there is ? Thou shalt not? written on it?s door. The church doesn?t welcome anyone who doesn?t want to live by its rules. It doesn?t welcome those whose hearts are still full of joy of life. The church demands obeying of the rules it has made for us, and condemns everyone who wants live by their own terms. The Chapel is that church which when we grow older we notice to have more power on us than God itself. So the man looks away from the Chapel and back into the garden of love. He still tries to seek for something that could be left from his youth but instead he ?saw it was filled with graves, and tombstones where flowers should be?. In the same place where innocence has bared it?s roots was the graveyard. His dreams that once flourished full with imagination lied now under the weight of the gray tombstones. The man is in despair, when he sees what has he lost and what happened to him and the world around him. It?s too gloomy in this wrecked garden of his. It seems like his Garden is some form of dystopia, a place where all his fears became real. A place from where he doesn?t see a way out. He knows that he?s lost his youth forever and now when he is mature, that word doesn?t only mean that he has become wiser in apprehending the world that surrounded him. He had to face the reality when reaching adulthood; in it?s rawest form. William Blake capitalizes the words Garden and Love, because their meaning are much more deeper than the simple interpretation of the word. Love with a capital letter is more to be taken like a First Love: the same love that was given to man from God. Not just feelings from certain person to another and definitely not a romantic love. Garden is a place in our hearts where we preserve that primal emotion. But Blake shows us that in time that emotion whiter and disappears from our Garden. So Garden reminds us of the Garden of Eden were everything was pure until the Evil came and corrupted the Good. That happens to almost every soul, so that there is no Good when a man has lost his purity. However the poem is mainly about how the Chapel has changed the Garden. Especially that can be seen in the last line of the poem. ?And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briers my joys and desires?. Like some kind of creatures of the dark they surround us making everything bleak and unimaginative. When talking about briers, Blake probably refers to the same brier that Christ was wearing on the day of his crucifixion. So priests our encouraging us to live a joyless life so as Christ suffered for us we have to suffer too. But only what good can additional pain bring to our lives when already full of it? Blake?s view on the church of those days isn?t the most pleasant one and for a reason. When he saw people getting poorer and poorer everywhere around him, he couldn?t understand the church getting even richer, when one of it?s most important purposes includes taking care of those who suffer. Instead of that the only thing that the church seemed to value is the love of power and money, and easiest way to get to them was walking the road that was build especially for them in the name of God. Many horrible deeds have been done under that name so it seemed to Blake that God have abandoned the church and in order to find Him we?ll have to seek for him somewhere else. For instance in those forgotten places where we have left our innocence. In our personal Garden of Love.

Tweetspeak Poetry

“The Garden of Love,” by William Blake

< Return to William Blake Poems

The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love. And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not. writ over the door; So I turn’d to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

—William Blake

“The Garden of Love” Original Illustrations by William Blake

“The Garden of Love” Pen and Ink Illustration by Sara Barkat

Watch “The Garden of Love”, Videos

Musical Interpretations of “The Garden of Love”

William Blake (1757—1827) was a poet and engraver. He went to school long enough to learn to read and write, leaving at age 10. Beyond that, he was homeschooled by his mother, Catherine. Blake was inspired as a child by artists such as Raphael, Maarten van Heemskerck, Michelangelo, and Albrecht Dürer, whose work he was introduced to through books and prints. At the age of 10 his parents enrolled him in the drawing school at the Strand. At that time, Blake, who enjoyed reading, started to write his own poetry.

Blake was apprenticed to an engraver, and completed his apprenticeship at 21. James Basier drew in the older style, line-engraving (that looks similar to lineart) as opposed to the more popular painterly methods. Blake was sent to Westminster Abbey to sketch, and was inspired artistically by it; additionally, he experienced visions there. In 1779, Blake joined the Royal Academy, a school of art, where he met friends such as John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard, and George Cumberland, who shared his radical views. Blake ended up, perhaps accidentally, in a riot on Newgate Prison (the Gordon Riots).

Blake married Catherine Boucher, who he taught to read and write, as well as training her as an engraver. She became a partner in his work.

Blake published his first volume of poems, Poetical Sketches around 1783. He and his former fellow apprentice James Parker opened a printshop, and worked with Joseph Johnson (a radical publisher who worked with many dissidents such as John Henry Fuseli, Richard Price, Joseph Priestly, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Paine).

Blake used relief etching (or illuminated printing) to illustrate most of his writing. Instead of the usual intaglio style , where the plate is covered with an acid-resistant coating such as wax, and the lines scratched through the coating, so that the lines to be printed are cut into the plates; Blake would paint his pictures onto the plate in the acid-resistant medium and etch the rest of the plate, so that the parts to be printed onto paper would stand up in relief. He would then hand-color the finished prints with watercolors. (For this reason, there are many different colored versions of his various poems). This creates the “loose” effect of his hand on the page, present in his illuminated poems. For his commissions, however, he would work in intaglio.

In the books Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience Blake wrote lyric poetry that also served as scathing social commentary. He wrote some poems, such as The French Revolution that were never published.

In his poem America Blake explored the idea of revolutions, and in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he satirizes both the state and the church. In 1790 he moved to Lambeth.

Blake created his connected mythology in a collection of illuminated poems known as his prophetic works, partially based on the events of his day, in which he continued to explore his philosophical and ethical ideas. Blake continued to make money through commissions from patrons, though sometimes he had issue with their lack of imagination. Around this time, he started his epic work, Jerusalem.

In August 1803, Blake and a soldier named John Scofield got into a fight, and the soldier accused him not only of assault, but of speaking seditious words against the king. Though Blake went to trial, it seemed clear that the evidence was invented, and Blake was acquitted.

Blake was interested in illustrating the Canterbury Tales but after bringing the idea to a publisher, the publisher chose another engraver for the piece, as Blake was known as too eccentric to be marketable. Instead, Blake set up an exhibition to promote his version. With that, he published the “Descriptive Catalogue” of his pieces, which included an analysis that became known as a classic of Chaucer criticism. But the exhibition did poorly, and sold nothing.

Blake began to illustrate The Book of Job , and was given a commission to illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy , a project he did not finish before his death; but the few watercolors he created for the project received praise. He was still working on that project the day he died; he stopped working on it only to complete a portrait of his wife (with the words “Stay Kate! Keep just as you are—I will draw your portrait—for you have ever been an angel to me.”) After that, he sang hymns, and with his last words being that he would be with his wife always, he died. As for Kate, on the day of her death, a decade later, she called out to him “as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming to him, and it would not be long now.” ( more )

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Gr. 12 Eng HL POETRY – THE GARDEN OF LOVE by William Blake

Analysis of a poem: POETRY – THE GARDEN OF LOVE by William Blake

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A Scottish Lobster Recipe That’s Worth the Wait

Peak-summer local crustaceans need little embellishment beyond a simple pan sauce in this cherished family dish.

By Jeremy Lee

Published on July 9, 2024

When I was in my teens and starting my life as a chef in London, before adulthood’s small luxuries had come to roost, I arrived home to Dundee by train, the last few minutes of the journey spent barreling over the great Tay Rail Bridge spanning the vast estuary of the Firth of Tay. As the train rolled into the station, there stood Mum and Dad as always, all waves, hugs, and great excitement. 

In later years, with my 20s behind me, and now a head chef in restaurants, I would splash out on a flight from London City Airport to the small strip on the north bank of the river, that bit further out from Dundee. The feeling was akin to that of an old film. As the twin propellers stopped turning, the falling silence was broken with whoops from folks waiting to scoop up their disembarking loved ones. 

And then we were on the road home, to a house filled with the scent of a pan of lentil soup simmering on the stove, a loaf of bread still warm from the oven, and the memories of countless dishes prepared and scoffed at through our childhood that we now craved as grown-ups returning home. Drinks were poured amidst the bustle, chatter and all the usual hoo-ha coming home entailed, while Mum wove a path through it all, readying the table to feed her brood. 

When the excitement had finally blown itself out—and between spoonfuls of our favorite brew, ladled from the great pan of lentils—talk turned to what was in the cards in the coming days. Visiting gardens, markets, and bookshops were mooted, as well as perusing the familiar bakers, butchers, and fishmongers. Was there anything new to explore? No, of course not, with many of the usual suspects still trading—if perhaps not thriving—as is the way on the east coast of Scotland, a place where the hands of time seem to turn so very gently. 

At the forefront of the many thoughts and suggestions bandied ’round the table were those of lobster . Partly due to conscience, though mostly availability, I only ever ate lobster on these rare occasions while visiting my folks. These beautiful crustacea, caught locally, could only be had with a phone call first to make sure that the guests of honor were in the tank, abutting the pier in Crail on the East Neuk of Fife. 

The prize lay at the end of a fair drive from the hills in Angus where we lived, across the River Tay from the county of Angus where lies the Kingdom of Fife, home to the ancient and venerable town of St. Andrew’s. Beyond the university and ruins of castle and cathedral sits the East Neuk of Fife, a coastline with small fishing ports once home to great fleets of trawlers that fed a vast herring trade. For the great part, the fisheries are the stuff of legend, the silver darlings now but memories. That said, the ancient, small, and rather lovely harbors remain—Anstruther, St. Monans, Pittenweem, and Crail—unchanged in appearance except for the lack of hubbub. 

A modest but healthy fishing trade persists there, but always in Dad’s mind was the tank at the bottom of the steep road to the harbor in Crail. When the call was made to ensure lobsters were to be had, and a great “ah!” of success was uttered: The adventure began. For, yes, indeed, within the tank were lobsters, their shells of a darkly hued deepest indigo, their claws bound with rubber bands to prevent any untoward mishap befalling the unwary. 

My parents loved these adventures, piling my sister and brothers into the car and heading off to find some marvel from among the many delights the east coast has to offer. Scotland’s seaboard has much to recommend: Its game, meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, and of course shellfish, add considerably to the magnificence of the local larder. 

Lobsters acquired, Dad, ever a spirited driver, made for home. In the kitchen, potatoes were peeled and cut to fry golden and crisp. Wine was chilled. Was it warm enough to lay a table outside? Such thoughts I left to my folks, who had their ways, while I busied myself with the lobsters, each just shy of a pound in weight—the meat of slightly smaller lobsters always a bit sweeter and more delicate. 

Necessity demands shellfish remain alive with vigor until just prior to cooking. I could pull a discreet veil over the dispatching of lively lobsters, but I prefer to be frank about the practicalities—a deft, swift piercing and confident downward thrust cleaves the crustacea in two and does the job. Then, with a flick of the knife inserted at the joint, the claws are detached and cracked, and the lobster is ready to cook. 

Such purity of produce requires but the simplest of cooking. The parts are laid in a deep tray. Shallots are peeled and finely diced. The herbs are picked and finely chopped. Then the lobsters are lightly seasoned with sea salt and freshly milled pepper, anointed with olive oil, and roasted swiftly, before they are placed on a handsome dish. The sliced shallots are added to the still-warm pan over gentle heat. After a few minutes, the wine is added, and a minute later the herbs and lemon juice. The rising scent beguiled me, reminding me why I never ate lobster anywhere else but home in Scotland. 

And even though a bowl of chips was served, they were often cool from neglect as every last morsel of lobster was picked from the shells, while chatter and wine flowed. My parents took affront at any such waste, this being a dish as cherished as these times at the table together. 

Though I miss my folks hugely, I am blessed with friends who love to holiday on the Western Isles as much as I do and visit one of the Hebrides each summer. When fortune smiles and a fisherman lands his catch, and when the filled lobster creels and crab pots are decanted and we have chosen our beasties, we hurry home and set the fires to cook. While we feast splendidly on Scottish lobsters, I smile with old, happy memories of the east coast mingling happily with new ones made in the West. 

Shallot-Roasted Lobster

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The Modernist Angst in T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

This essay about T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” examines its depiction of modernist angst and the complexities of the human condition. It explores the fragmented psyche of the protagonist Prufrock who is paralyzed by self-doubt societal expectations and fear of judgment. The essay highlights Eliot’s use of stream-of-consciousness technique rich imagery and symbolic references to convey themes of isolation indecision and the relentless passage of time. Prufrock’s introspective narrative and his struggles with identity and self-worth reflect universal themes making the poem a powerful and timeless work of literary art.

How it works

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” first published in 1915 is a big deal in modernist poetry digging deep into the messed-up minds and worries of the early 1900s. The main guy in the poem J. Alfred Prufrock struggles with feeling out of place in the city and never quite measuring up. Eliot’s way with words—mixing up thoughts painting vivid pictures and using symbols—creates a complex story about loneliness doubt and how time just keeps on ticking.

Prufrock the guy at the heart of it all feels stuck always doubting himself and what people expect of him. Right from the start Eliot paints a picture with words: “Let’s go then you and I / When the evening spreads out against the sky / Like a patient on an operating table.” This powerful comparison sets the tone for the whole poem showing a world that feels numb and asleep just like Prufrock’s own feelings.

Eliot’s way of jumping around in the story and mixing up thoughts shows how messed up Prufrock’s head is. The poem doesn’t follow a straight line but jumps from one idea to another just like how our thoughts can jump around. Eliot hammers home Prufrock’s uncertainty with questions that keep coming up like “Do I dare?” and “How should I act?” These questions show how much Prufrock struggles with making choices and sticking to them.

One of the saddest parts of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is how it talks about time and what it does to people. Prufrock feels time slipping away and it’s clear he’s not happy about it. He looks back at his life and feels pretty down about how small and meaningless it seems. The line “I’ve measured out my life with coffee spoons” shows how empty and routine his life feels just going through the motions day after day.

Prufrock’s worries about how others see him really get to him. He’s sure everyone at the party he’s going to will judge him especially the women “talking of Michelangelo.” This keeps coming up in the poem showing how Prufrock thinks people are always comparing him to these perfect ideals making him feel even worse. He’s so scared of messing up socially that he worries he’ll say or do something dumb and be laughed at.

The poem also dives into Prufrock’s struggle with who he really is and what he’s worth. He keeps asking himself if he’ll ever do something important or if he’s just meant to be a nobody. This is clear in the lines “No! I’m not Prince Hamlet and I never will be; / I’m just a side character good for starting scenes here and there.” Here Prufrock admits he’s not some big hero like Hamlet known for deep thinking and big problems.

Eliot’s way with words paints a vivid picture of Prufrock’s inner struggles. The city Eliot describes is dark and heavy full of “yellow fog” and “smoke” showing how trapped Prufrock feels in his own life. The picture of “a pair of ragged claws / Crawling across the floors of silent seas” shows how much Prufrock wants to escape his human limits and go back to a simpler wilder way of living.

Even though “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” seems sad people still connect with it because it really gets how hard it can be to figure yourself out. Eliot’s look into Prufrock’s mind—his worries about who he is time slipping away and feeling alone in a busy world—hits home with a lot of people. The poem’s way of playing with language and telling a deep personal story set a new standard for modern poetry inspiring lots of writers after Eliot.

To sum it up T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a deep dive into modern worries and the search for meaning in life. With its jumbled thoughts powerful images and honest look at one man’s struggles the poem captures how tough it can be to face doubts and time’s unstoppable march. Prufrock’s story—feeling small in a big world and always questioning—speaks to bigger truths about how we all search for meaning and identity making it a timeless piece of poetry that still hits hard today.

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The Modernist Angst in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". (2024, Jul 06). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-modernist-angst-in-t-s-eliots-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock/

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Modernist Angst in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-modernist-angst-in-t-s-eliots-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock/ [Accessed: 9 Jul. 2024]

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"The Modernist Angst in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"," PapersOwl.com , 06-Jul-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-modernist-angst-in-t-s-eliots-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock/. [Accessed: 9-Jul-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Modernist Angst in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-modernist-angst-in-t-s-eliots-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock/ [Accessed: 9-Jul-2024]

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Being a Cougar Is So Back

Recent films like The Idea of You and A Family Affair are challenging long-held myths about older women and desirability.

Everything old is new again, as the saying goes. Or rather, everything older . At least when it comes to the age of women being romanced onscreen (and sometimes off), and new when it comes to the young men romancing them.

What’s also new? The direction of this age gap.

In the last two decades, culture has labeled women who pursue these relationships “cougars.” Suggesting an inappropriate power imbalance, and framing the woman as a predator of a sort (that this concern is never applied in the reverse is but one small example of how women are forever held to different standards).

But lately, what has been considered a derogatory punchline is being reclaimed as empowering in the cultural zeitgeist. The last few years, however, have seen a refreshing resurgence of storylines featuring love stories between older women and younger men when we’ve long been accustomed to the opposite. After all, some of the most classic films in Hollywood have starred older male actors and much younger actresses: Gary Cooper (51) and Grace Kelly (23) in High Noon ; Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (24 year age gap) in their many collaborations; Jimmy Stewart (42) and Grace Kelly (now 25) in Rear Window ; Gwyneth Paltrow (26) and Michael Douglas (54) in A Perfect Murder (a classic to some of us!); Tom Cruise and nearly all his recent co-stars.

The film version of The Idea of You was released on Prime Video in May, with Anne Hathaway in the role of Solène, a gallerist who just turned 40, and Nicholas Galitzine playing the much younger Hayes, the frontman of pop sensation August Moon. (Much like real-life Wilde, who was the target of much online vitriol from certain corners of the Internet during her relationship with Styles, when the tabloids catch wind of Solene’s and Hayes’ relationship, she is blasted as a cougar in the press, prompting her daughter to get bullied and teased at school.) And last week, A Family Affair premiered on Netflix starring Nicole Kidman as a successful widowed writer in her early fifties who falls for the boss of her 23-year-old daughter (played by Joey King); the man in question is an over-indulged dimwitted movie star played skillfully by Zac Efron, who is 20 years Kidman’s junior.

While these are the two most recent high-profile examples they are hardly the only ones. In the HBO limited series The Sympathizer , Hoa Xuande’s character, 36, has an affair with Sandra Oh (52) (also: duh). In 2022, Jean Smart won the Emmy for her performance in season 2 of Hacks , which contained an episode where her character has a one-night stand with a much younger man.

We’ve also seen critical interrogations of this relationship dynamic. The 2023 film May December , which was inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau case, is a difficult, if, at times, darkly comedic, look at a relationship between a 36-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy, who go on to marry and have children together. Further afield, the compelling French film Last Summer , directed by Catherine Breillat, which arrives in American theaters this month, is about a fifty-something married lawyer who has an affair with her teenage stepson. As the plot progresses, audiences are increasingly asked to interrogate the sexual dynamics at play through a #MeToo lens.

One noteworthy distinction here is that these relationships are not fodder for cheap laughs. Drama, yes. But not a punchline—or a pity party. And this attitude is extending beyond the screen: A recent revival of Sunset Boulevard in London cast the glamorous and powerful Nicole Scherzinger, 45, as Norma Desmond, a role that has long defined the pitiful aging woman grasping desperately at her lost youth. In this case, however, director Jamie Lloyd told The New York Times , he was specifically looking for an actress “in her prime.”

So what accounts for this flipping of the age ratio?

Entrepreneur and former ad executive, Cindy Gallop , whose viral 2009 TEDTalk “Make Love Not Porn” opened with the line “I date younger men,” believes it’s a reflection of who is making these films. “The onscreen narratives we’re seeing now come from books and scripts by women, and are being helmed by women, and backed and driven by women.”

.css-1aear8u:before{margin:0 auto 0.9375rem;width:34px;height:25px;content:'';display:block;background-repeat:no-repeat;}.loaded .css-1aear8u:before{background-image:url(/_assets/design-tokens/elle/static/images/quote.fddce92.svg);} .css-curasl{margin:0rem;font-size:1.625rem;line-height:1.2;font-family:SaolDisplay,SaolDisplay-fallback,SaolDisplay-roboto,SaolDisplay-local,Georgia,Times,serif;margin-bottom:0.3125rem;font-weight:normal;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-curasl{font-size:2.125rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-curasl{font-size:2.125rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-curasl{font-size:2.25rem;line-height:1.1;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-curasl{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1.2;}}.css-curasl em,.css-curasl i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;}.css-curasl b,.css-curasl strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-curasl i,.css-curasl em{font-style:italic;} We know that older women are just as attractive to younger men, as older men are attractive to younger women, no matter how threatening the patriarchy finds that.”

And like anyone else, women want to see both their realities and fantasies reflected in the world. Culture, meanwhile, is struggling to keep up with how women actually live. We know from studies that single women without children report being happier, and yet we see few storylines that reflect the possibility of satisfaction outside of partnership or parenthood. Similarly, women are increasingly earning more, and thanks to access to better healthcare and nutrition and exercise many of us are remaining physically healthy for longer (as every celebrity website loves to point out). Why wouldn’t we be considered attractive to literally everyone?

Says Gallop: “We know that older women are just as attractive to younger men, as older men are attractive to younger women, no matter how threatening the patriarchy finds that.”

In some ways, these storylines feel long overdue. A small but necessary counterbalance to the so-called “ trad wife ” movement that has become increasingly popular on social media.

And yet, it’s worth noting we’ve been here before. As new as these pairings might seem, they are just the latest iteration. In 1996 Terry McMillan published How Stella Got Her Groove Back about Stella, a successful 42-year-old woman who flies to an island for vacation and falls for a 21-year-old, whom she eventually ends up marrying. In the movie, Stella is played by Angela Bassett and the younger man by Taye Diggs. And let us not forget Sex and the City ’s Samantha Jones and Smith Jerrod.

In fact, if anything, this latest round feels tame—at least on screen. In The Idea of You, Hayes’ age has been upped from 20 to 26. Hathaway, meanwhile, could pass for a 30-year-old. The sex scenes onscreen are extremely mild compared to what’s described in the novel. Similarly, in A Family Affair , Kidman not only looks young, but she behaves like a woman half her age—giggling and insecure—and even then it begs the audience to believe that someone as accomplished as we’re told her character is would find anything in common with Efron’s, who behaves like an incompetent five year old. Abs are nice, but not that nice.

It leaves one craving something closer to what many of us are experiencing: The power and confidence of aging, with or without the youthful body to match. That’s something we all should be attracted to.

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Breaking news, beloved nyc neighborhood staple crest hardware & urban garden center closing its doors.

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A beloved Brooklyn hardware store that became a neighborhood staple — featuring a pet pig and hosting weddings and art shows while peddling hammers — is closing, likely to make room for condos.

Crest Hardware & Urban Garden Center will become Williamsburg’s latest victim of gentrification in August — 62 years after opening its doors on Metropolitan Avenue between Lorimer Street and Union Avenue.

“In the end, we are facing the same plight as many other small businesses in our community and city,” the iconic store’s owner, Joseph Franquinha, said in an online statement Monday.

“Sadly, our property partners did not grant us an opportunity to renew our lease and have chosen to sell the property in which Crest sits.”

The owner told local outlet Brownstoner, “What the new buyers do with it will be up to them. But one can assume condos.’’

Franquinha and his relatives own the land that the shop sits on, and he said he wanted to continue to try to make a go of the family business but was ultimately “outvoted.”

He fought back tears as he recalled to The Post on Tuesday how the shop —  known for its wide selection, creative vibe and friendly service —  grew from a small hardware store, started by his late father, Manny, across the street in 1962, into an eclectic retailer of cool items.

Having started full-time at Crest in 2004, Franquinha assumed a “managerial role” in 2006 and became owner in 2009. He worked alongside Manny until his death in 2017 at 89.

Father and son sometimes differed in business philosophy. When the younger Franquinha wanted to dedicate some of Crest’s space to a garden center, his father scoffed at the idea.

“He never took a long vacation, but he went to Portugal for two weeks in 2007, and while he was away, we built the original garden center out back with basic annuals and perennials for sale,” Franquinha said.

“When he came back, he said, ‘You better make this work.”

And it did. Crest’s inventory evolved from there to include cookware, home goods, art supplies, and even popular Crest-brand apparel created by Franquinha’s wife, Liza.

“The garden center was the locomotive of our business for 20 years, but we never lost sight of hardware,” said Franquinha, 41, of Ridgewood, Queens.

“We had a large artist demographic shopping here, and they wanted high-end spray paint, and they were willing to spend more money for better art materials.”

Customers were dismayed to learn of the store’s demise.

“I loved Crest Hardware, not just because they were a local business, but because they had everything,” said Austin Moore, 39, a production sound mixer who lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

“The customer service was unbeatable; everyone who worked there knew their stuff.”

Crest’s staff, which peaked at 30 employees during COVID-19,  has since dwindled to 18 as the store prepares to shutter for good.

Crest’s mascot and Franquinha’s pet pig, Franklin, will be forced to relocate from the shop’s backyard pen, which he has inhabited since 2010.  

Finlay the parrot, another Crest denizen, will also need new digs.

“Some people would come here just to see Franklin and Finlay,’’ said Crest staffer Liza Franquinha.

Eric Swick, 31, Bushwick, Brooklyn, who works at its garden center, said, “It’s hard to visualize Metropolitan Avenue without Crest.”

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Generative AI... What If This Is As Good As It Gets?

Generative AI stormed into the public consciousness when ChatGPT arrived to ghostwrite every middle school essay and, occasionally, federal court briefs . In less than two years, the technology has improved considerably and — more importantly — with folks building the necessary guardrails and firm tech professionals crafting sound procedures , it’s become a credible tool for the legal industry. It certainly doesn’t do anything well enough to replace massive troves of associates yet. But it summarizes, it streamlines drafting, and with proper guidance, it can perform limited research tasks, which are all use cases with tangible value for legal work.

But while AI gurus preach never-ending advancement… what if this is as good as it gets?

A few weeks ago on the Legaltech Week Journalists’ Roundtable, I cited recent studies suggesting that Generative AI development was sapping electricity — and water for cooling — at an alarming and expensive rate that could become unsustainable. Goldman Sachs seems to agree.

In a new report , the bank compared the mounting costs of GenAI development with the plausible opportunities for future revenue and came up empty. The tasks that GenAI performs now are, the report suggests, likely the only tasks it can ever support. At least to a level capable of challenging, much less replacing, a human. With the applications of GenAI largely capped, Goldman sees the potential revenue streams as… slightly bigger streams and not raging rivers.

Which is a significant problem because GenAI needs a whole lot of money to improve. Few have been as bearish on GenAI as Ed Zitron, and in his victory lap coverage of the Goldman report , he notes that even linear improvements to large language model performance will require exponential increases in training data:

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei saying that the AI models currently in development will cost as much as $1bn to train, and within three years we may see  models that cost as much as “ten or a hundred billion” dollars , or roughly three times the GDP of Estonia.

No one is dumb enough to spend a hundred billion dollars to improve incrementally. Maybe the people running the F-35 program. But outside of the defense industry, no one is dumb enough to spend a hundred billion dollars to improve incrementally.

Maybe this isn’t all that bad for the legal industry. We’ve written before about the importance of rejecting the frame that AI should be more “human” and instead focus on its power to accelerate purely mechanistic tasks . The AI impresarios that Goldman swats down are pitching a Scarlett Johansson sexbot , but legal doesn’t really need that.

Seriously, legal does not need that.

Lawyers aren’t — at least hopefully not for ethics reasons — expecting a robot to make legal judgments for them. They just want a tool that they can feed full of a whole production and then spit out all the key issues it finds based on basic legal concepts. Most of that doesn’t even require the generative part of AI that’s causing all these cost concerns.

If the bottom falls out of GenAI development, then that’s not great for legal. But assuming it trundles along just getting marginally better at what it does already, that’s probably still a good deal for legal.

So… what if this is as good as it gets? Are Silicon Valley techbros going to crash a good thing because they fancy themselves as some post-modern Prometheus or are they going to pull back and develop a nice, usefully boring productivity tool?

Earlier : The Legal Industry Has A Long Way To Go Before GPT Matches The Talk Maybe We’ve Got The Artificial Intelligence In Law ‘Problem’ All Wrong

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How to Grow a Foolproof First Garden With Your Kids

There are tons of things that kids can love about gardening: digging, picking, identifying color and texture and taste. If you’ve got a small spot of the yard to dedicate to the endeavor, why not create a garden for your kids? You can keep it very simple, using “cut and come again” vegetables and flowers, and vegetables that are prolific and unfussy. You can find all these seeds and plants at your local nursery.

The plants you'll need

Here's what I recommend for your children's garden:

Cherry tomato start

Sunflower seeds or starts

Lettuce seeds

Radish seeds

1 six pack of green beans

1 six pack of carrot starts

1 pumpkin start

1 cucumber start

Cherry tomatoes are almost guaranteed success, with prolific and enduring harvests. If you went with a full-sized tomato, there’s too much chance of prematurely picking a tomato before it’s done, or a mood being ruined when that tomato is hit by blossom end rot or worms. If you choose a mid-height sunflower, you’ll be able to cut them and have them grow side shoots over the season, or you can simply leave them to bloom and bring the bees. As long as you water religiously, the seeds of lettuce, radishes and beets should germinate easily. Pulling the radishes and beets out can be extremely satisfying for young kids, and you can pick leaves off the lettuce and it will grow back. 

I suggest carrot starts instead of seeds because carrots are notoriously hard to germinate and long to come to size. Cucumbers will round out the possible salads from the bed, and a pumpkin will be the pièce de résistance at the end of the season when the rest of the garden is spent. You can save the pumpkin seeds from this year’s jack o’lantern for next year’s garden. 

Laying out the garden

In laying out the garden, you want to use the seeds to separate the tomatoes on one side from the pumpkins on the other. Here's my suggested layout. Starting on one side, plant the tomato plant. Remember that tomatoes need support, so use a tomato cage or another trellis and add it early. They’re hard to put on later. Now plant rows of lettuce, radish, beets and carrots and beans across the bed. Make sure the beans are last. At the other end, place the pumpkin at the top of the bed and the cucumber below it. Plant a few sunflowers (no more than two or three) in the corners of the bed. In between the beans and cucumber, place a trellis so the beans and cucumber can climb. 

Maintaining your garden

You'll need to water the bed once a day, first thing in the morning. You want to water so you can feel moist soil when you stick your finger about six inches into the bed. Within a few weeks the sunflowers and other seeds should germinate, and a month after planting, it’ll be time to thin the radishes, beets and lettuce to one healthy seedling every six inches. 

The crops will all be ready for harvest at different times, but each of these crops offers an opportunity to pick, grab and dig, with lots of different textures and colors. You should be able to make a few salads from the crops, and even have green beans with a number of meals. Everything in this bed can be eaten without cooking, so you can snack in the garden.