The Garden of Love

The Garden of Love

In Carl Truman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, he quotes William Blake’s poem The Garden of Love, cir.1794.

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.

A powerful poem that could be taken several ways. His childhood innocence and presumed closeness to God, now replaced by harshness of religion.

As Truman points out, “….it's life killing that's what he's saying and it's policed by these, I suppose now we would say almost gestapo like figures. These sinister black cadaverous figures of the priest who were there as he said, ‘binding with briars my joys and desires. Their sole purpose is to stop my pleasure to stop me from realizing myself to stop me from flourishing’”.

I think Truman has the more accurate interpretation. God gives us the parameters of living and behaving, knowing what awaits us in adulthood. A child left to their own will grow up a miserable menace to society and themselves. Jesus is your only hope, to save you from YOU and your own personal Garden of Love, in reality, a garden of self and sin.

Blessings