The Garden of Love
William Blake 1757 (Soho) – 1827 (London)
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.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 457 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFXF XGEG XXXX |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 747 |
Words | 144 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"The Garden of Love" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/39173/the-garden-of-love>.
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