that third parties may have tried to force on her, the Lilly maintains her resolve and stays true to what she knows she desires. Antal captures this idea well when she says "The Lilly, is the most spiritual showing that 'however subject the natural body might be to force and threats, man's spiritual body, like the Lilly, could never be essentially debased'". Ideal Love The idea of Purity in the poem also trickles into the other theme of Ideal Love. The Ideal Love is often the purest form of love in that the love is pure because it is pure love; there is no game, or flaws to it. The Ideal Love is simply love, purely innocent and true love. Johnson states that "The Lilly who delights in love is another manifestation of the 'sweet flower' offered to the Rose lover in the first poem on his plate." Rather than denying perhaps the true, ideal love, as the man in "My Pretty Rose Tree" does, "The Lilly" vows to delight itself in a pure and true love not besmirched by duty, or any other thorn the rose may bear. References Sources Antal, Eva. ""Labour of Love"—Ovidian Flower-Figures in William Blake's Songs." Eger Journal of English Studies (2008): 23-40. Web. Durant, G. H. "Blake's 'My Pretty Rose Tree'--An Interpretation." Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory (1965): 33–37. Web. Durrant, G. H. "Blake's 'My Pretty Rose-Tree'." Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory (1968): 1–5. Web. Johnson, Mary Lynn. "Emblem and Symbol in Blake." Huntington Library Quarterly (1974): 151–170. Web. External links A comparison of extant copies of the original hand-painted copies of "The Lilly" available from the William Blake Archive 1794 poems Songs of Innocence and of Experience Love poems