Robbery in Eden

[_huckelberry]

Blixa, please lend me a hand. I do not see a connect to Eden in the poem. If there is a Biblical reference the one I would hear is to Song of Solomon.(?)

continuing Blakes tweaking the nose of proper folks,

Dear Mother ,dear Mother, the Church is cold
But the ale house is health and pleasant and warm.
Besides I can tell where I am used well,
Such usage in Heaven will never do well.

But if at the church they would give us some Ale,
And a pleasna fire our sousl to regale
We'd sing and we'd pray all the live long day,
Nor ever once wish from the church to stray.

Then the parson might preach and drink and sing,
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring.
And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at Church
Would not have bandy children,nor fasting, nor birch

And God, like a father rejoicing to see
His children as pleasant and happy as he,
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel
But kiss him and give him both drink and apparel.

[_Morley]

Blixa, please lend me a hand. I do not see a connect to Eden in the poem. ...

Perhaps you'll find it in the poem's first two stanzas.

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.

[_huckelberry]

Morley, my copy in Songs of Experience reads as Blixa posted. I do not find your stanzas. I remain puzzled. I can see a maybe or maybe not link to Eden in your stanzas but so far they appear to be a different poem. (different versions same poem is possible?)

[_Morley]

Morley, my copy in Songs of Experience reads as Blixa posted. I do not find your stanzas. I remain puzzled. I can see a maybe or maybe not link to Eden in your stanzas but so far they appear to be a different poem. (different versions same poem is possible?)

The Garden of Love is often truncated, since the last three verses make such a nice poem all by themselves, kind of like what’s often done with Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol.


Edit. I need to type a disclaimer here: I have absolutely no education in this area and am only speaking from my experience as a reader. I recognize I may need to be schooled. If so, let it begin.

[_huckelberry]

Morley, Thank you for the link.
"And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste."

Just continuing my unfinished rumination, I can hear a clear reference to the fall in these words. It sounds like a comparison rich with irony. A loss of innocence which the church does not seem to hear about is compared to another one which the church tends to make a lot of noise about.

I am curious about z,s opening post. My first thought was that it is too odd ball to create much discussion. A second thought and I realize that Zeezrom is wondering about some interesting things floating about outside of the regular dogmatics of the fall. This poem touches on some possibities I think.