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 have 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