Please give some criticism about "The Garden of Love" by William Blake.

This excellent poem that makes up part of the
Songs of Experience of Blake's most famous work represents some of
Blake's harshest critcism of the church and the impact it has. Note how in what used to
be a garden, a chapel has been built. This building has managed to transform the garden,
which was a place of freedom, into a graveyard.

Some
critics argue that the image of the "green" in the garden represents the playing space
of childhood, which eventually comes under the dominion of law and order. This
represents, it is argued, the way in which the liberty of the state of childhood becomes
the restricted and trapped state of being an adult. Blake therefore could be said to be
arguing for a world in which that sense of freedom continues into adulthood, rather than
"binding" the "joys and desires" of adults.

However, other
critics focus on line two and argue that this leads to a crucial ambiguity in how we
read the poem:

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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.

Therefore we could
argue that this indicates not that the chapel has been recently built, but it was there
all along and has only just now been noticed by the speaker. We can either argue that
this represents the way that rules and regulations and restrictions gradually emerge as
we mature into adults, or we can say that the sudden appearance of the chapel indicates
something about the speaker and his sudden insight into the way that religion and other
regulations of society actually restrict and take away our freedom and innocence. Either
way, it is obvious that adulthood, or the state of "experience" is presented in negative
terms, as flowers are replaced with tombstones and the place of play and freedom now has
"Thou shalt not" written on the chapel door.