Gardens of Babylon
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon - one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one for which no direct archaeological evidence has ever been found, with primary sources surviving only in second-hand reports. In Taylor's writing, invoked as an image of something beautiful and legendary whose existence is uncertain: the figure draws as much force from its possible non-existence as from its splendour.
The Gardens carry the charge of beauty whose reality cannot be confirmed - something that may exist only in its telling. Used as an image for an experience or relationship whose vividness in the speaker's account is matched by the question of whether it ever actually happened.
Appears in 1 song
“Now you hang from my lips Like the Gardens of Babylon”
The Gardens of Babylon operate as a simile and allusion that introduces the question of whether the love is real or mythical. Because the Gardens of Babylon are the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World for which we have no direct archaeological evidence, the comparison raises the possibility that the entire relationship is imagined or legendary rather than real.