Week 37 - The Garden of Love

It's poem time! Take a single word, phrase, or concept, and represent it in your challenge photo. William Blake was a devout Christian, but had unique viewpoints on what he believed was oppression and that "joyless rules" that were placed on believers. This poem is somewhat of a protest in that a joyful and wonderful garden of life, love, and innocence has been taken over by doctrines and rules, and the that the "priests in black robes" were the oppressive enforcers that bind with briars, our joys and desires. The poem is part of his famous collection Songs of Innocence and Experience, which was first published in 1789. It really expresses the idea that love is love, and that domination and control in any religious genre is a form of oppression and certainly not a form of love and/or freedom. THE GARDEN OF LOVE BY William Blake 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.