The Garden of Love

    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.

    William Blake