The Sick Rose: Analysis of William Blake's Poem

The speaker is telling a rose that it is sick. An invisible worm that flies by night in a howling storm has penetrated its bed or center. Its secretive love is destroying the rose's life.

The poem adopts an abstract approach to the theme dealt with in The Chimney Sweeper (E). Shame and guilt result in attitudes to sexuality and physicality which bring sickness and death rather than life. Many critics find that it eludes definite interpretation. It may be seen as a companion poem to The Blossom in the Songs of Innocence.

This is an elusive poem which needs to be read in the light of Blake's beliefs about sexuality and as a Song of Experience.

EXP after the FALL:

Experience tends towards dominance, establishing itself as the only vision of reality. That reality is the reflection of fallen human nature (See Religious / philosophical background > Blake's religious outlook > Blake's view of the Fall of Adam and Eve.). This distorts and corrupts human love and sexuality by making it a thing of shame – hence it is ‘secret'. Just as Adam and Eve had to hide from God once they had disobeyed him, so the worm flies under cover of night.

There is something insidious about the worm ‘finding out' the rose's bed, suggesting an action without consent. It is a silent assault which causes destruction. The poem conveys that the love of fallen individuals is one that assaults and devours when it is associated with shame and secrecy, rather than being liberating, creative and joyous.

LANGUAGE AND TONE: This is an apparently simple poem in terms of diction and directness of address, yet it is full of associations. Its power comes from our ideas about language such as:

• ‘sick'
• ‘worm'
• ‘howling storm'
• ‘thy bed of dark crimson joy'
• ‘dark secret love'.

There are two quatrains rhyming ABCB. The monosyllables of the first line make it emphatic and ponderous. The sense of foreboding in the poem is enhanced by the rhymes – ‘worm' / ‘storm'; ‘joy' / ‘destroy'. Lines 2 – 8 are one sentence. This emphasizes the notion that the situation being described is one unified, uninterruptible experience. The momentum of the poem is similarly inescapable. We move from the end of the first sentence – ‘sick' to the end of the second closing sentence ‘destroy'.

Imagery and symbolism

Rose – This literary symbol is used in three ways:

• According to medieval tradition, it represents chastity / virginity and thus was associated with young girls
• It signifies love, especially romantic passion
• It is also linked with mortality, a sign of the transience of human love and beauty, because it blooms, smells sweetly and then dies. It therefore links sex and death.

The penetration of the rose by the hidden canker worm can, therefore, be understood as the covert sex which destroys the virginity of an ‘innocent' and thus corrupts her own expression of love.