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.
What the Gardens stand for is beauty that cannot be verified, a splendour known only through second-hand report. Taylor reaches for them when an experience or a relationship is as vivid in the telling as it is impossible to confirm: the more wondrous the account, the more it raises the question of whether it ever really 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.