Lyric Poem · Nature

The Garden of Love

by William Blake

Reading room

1I laid me down upon a bank,

2 Where Love lay sleeping;

3I heard among the rushes dank

4 Weeping, weeping.

5Then I went to the heath and the wild,

6 To the thistles and thorns of the waste;

7And they told me how they were beguiled,

8 Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

9I went to the Garden of Love,

10 And saw what I never had seen;

11A Chapel was built in the midst,

12 Where I used to play on the green.

13And the gates of this Chapel were shut

14 And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;

15So I turned to the Garden of Love

16 That so many sweet flowers bore.

17And I saw it was filled with graves,

18 And tombstones where flowers should be;

19And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

20 And binding with briars my joys and desires.

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“The Garden of Love” by William Blake — quilloak.com/poems/the-garden-of-love

Quick facts

Poem: The Garden of Love
Poet: William Blake
Length: 20 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Nature, Love, Sad

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 20 lines · 5 quatrains
Line length: Lines run 7-9 syllables (median 8), consistent with tetrameter. No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: William Blake1757–1827
Source record: PoetryDBThe Garden of Love by william-blake, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 5f49408399517bf0…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Nature Love Sad

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