Comments on Blake

[Bluebiird]

Hi :wave: I'm studying William Blake's poetry at the moment and I've found his work quite interesting, the Sick Rose is one of my favourite poems. Does anyone else like this poem?

[diannanurse]

I'm doing a paper on it now...it seemed like the easist out of the choices. Have to give three to four different interpretations and support them by indicating different connotations of the wording used.

[nuttynutmegz21]

I love William blake also...well, this poem at least. Great! But, what does it mean. I have an essay on it tomorrow, but my teacher hasn't prepared us at all. It's totally "our opinon".Help! But I need some insight...any ideas? Anyone like John Donne?

[Virgil]

Hi :wave: I'm studying William Blake's poetry at the moment and I've found his work quite interesting, the Sick Rose is one of my favourite poems. Does anyone else like this poem?


I love The Sick Rose. For everyone's enjoyment I'll copy it down:

O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.


A question for all: how many different symbals can you fit into this poem?

[bootlegger]

Ah the Sick Rose.
Hope you dont mind if i seize this oppurtunity to bounce around some theories?
I think generally this poem is about decay, and destruction. Its been pointed out that this poem is loaded with sexual imagery, a fair point what with the "crimson" joy and phallic imagery of the worm and the raw passion implicit in the howling storm. In my opinon, the sexual union of the "worm" and the "rose" (representing beauty, femininity and fragility) is not an act of sharing and mutual respect, but a sadomasochistic relationship with sinister undertones of maybe rape or the contraction of veneral disease, as a "dark secret love" which eventually destroys the rose.
We know that Blake was outraged by puritan attitudes to sex, and criticised them for the social consequences of driving sexual desire into secrecy (forcing "unsatisfied" men to visit prostitutes). In the Marriage of Heaven and hell he states "He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence".
The mixture of anapaests and iambs gives the poem a fractured, jarring feel; from the outset a reader knows that there is something intrinsically "wrong", a fear we discover to be correct as what appears to be pure on the surface is inhabited by a parasitic force.
A final note on the illustrative plate; it shows a caterpillar on the left (the position of the devil), which was a Biblical, Elizabethan, and Blakian symbol of the "pillager", which links back to the idea of a rape, or violent "plundering" of innocence.
Good stuff.