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Home: Poetry: William Blake: The Garden of Love
| THE GARDEN OF LOVE |
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a poem by William Blake
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- 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.
| "The Garden of Love" is reprinted from Songs of Innocence and Experience. William Blake. London: Basil Montague Pickering, 1866. |
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