Blake's 'The Garden of Love' - The Aesthetic and the Intellectual Are Inseparable Andre de Moeller-Samarin 12th Grade

William Blake, a 19th century romantic poet, wrote poetic arguments in Songs of Innocence and Experience filled with rich imagery and symbolism to convey his, at the time, idiosyncratic views surrounding the church and its negative impact on mankind. Blake was against the suppression of human nature by theological dogma and believed that all restraint in obedience to a moral code was against the spirit of life - the only restriction over man was in his own mind: the ‘mind forg’d manacles’. Using his poetry as a medium to convey his beliefs, Blake was against every conception of God as an omnipotent being and championed the idea of sex being true gratification to man. He shaped his works to invite the reader into seeing the world as he did by using their imagination aided by hand-engraved illuminated paintings. ‘The Garden of Love’ from Songs of Experience, uses aesthetic qualities such as emotive and evocative diction, meter, tone and Judea-Christian discourse to convey Blake’s ideological beliefs - therefore making the ‘aesthetic and the intellectual inseparable’. The poem criticises the church’s repressive rules surrounding sex and argues against the sanctimonious apologies for injustice the church encourages in an attempt to...