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.
Huh. I think this poet was functioning under the false notion that Original Sin was that Adam and Eve, um, "became married" (which is what the series His Dark materials implies, BTW). The real sin was that they put their will before that of God's--pride comes before the fall, etc.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, that sin, which we all are born with and only Baptism can remove--though we still must live with the strains of concupiscence which is a tendency toward sin that we must fight against all our lives--is what leads us to view sexuality, what this poem refers to as "love", as something dirty. It's only a sin when indulged in prior to or outside of matrimony, the sacramental union of a man and a woman.
Great poem! Really thought provoking.
I stopped by your blog today.
ReplyDeleteAnn