In contrast to the innocence of ‘His Coy Mistress’, which even then has a feeling of lusty, erotic ness, ‘The Sick Rose’ is the black mark. Blake doesn’t exaggerate as Marvell does, but he doesn’t need to for his words have many meanings, feelings, dark/deep embellishments that doesn’t meet the eye on the first glance.
It’s like the ‘Sick’ in the title depicts exactly what Blake’s trying to evoke. Its disgusting, filthy, guilty, overpowering words cut into your skin, like that of some dark magic. Blake picks on a ‘rose’ being an innocent flower, a flower which everyone relates romance, happiness and long lastingness with. He then twists it with his imagination, until something so sweet, so innocent is Dead inside. This is all caused by the ‘invisible worm’ like an infection. Yet it’s deadly because it ‘flies in the night’, ‘in the howling storm’, invisible to anyone or anything. Love is what it aims to destroy, it has no ‘soul’ it has nothing apart from greed. It is gluttonous. It is envious. It feeds on hatred. It crushes, like a mallet on a chain, once, twice, three times! Only to leave shattered shards of shining metal, the twinkling reflections snuffs out, one by one. Only to leave sorrow, longing, desperation, despair, confusion, anguish, anxiety, but not love. Love has simply evaporated. It ‘[finds] out thy bed’ something which couples share time together in, a meaningful place of happiness and bonding, as Blake states of ‘Crimson joy’ aha, he adds a tinge of sarcasm, as you can guess he doesn’t mean joy. He means blood. He hasn’t placed a single joyous word in his poetry, but he has evoked a strong picture. ‘And his dark secret love, does thy life destroy.’….
You have seen both the good side of love and the bad side of love. Love that goes wrong, Blake sees to it that the dark, deep secret in love with misfortune ends up shattering that ‘capsule’ ending life and happiness.
On a completely different scale of love, ‘Ozymandias’ is a thought provoking poem. It does show a significant amount of love, but this is ‘used’ in a different, more self thoughtful way. It describes him as a ‘king’, but not just that; ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings!’ These words are true of a proud, vain and arrogant man. A man who has filled himself with confidence, self esteem, pride and love for himself. Ironically, he hunts power, claims fame, seeks love but finds nothing. I’m merely not just stating this, but Shelley powerfully writes that ‘Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!’ The daft mutt has now challenged God. Yet cleverly Shelley means what he writes. Ozymandias does despair. For all that is left of him is a statue, ‘two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert, a shattered visage lies…half sunk’ Ozymandias, wants to be remembered, wants to be known, from whence he died, he thinks that he was such a great man, so full of love/pride for himself, he was sadly deluded. Shelley writes it about a sculptor who depicts Ozymandias with precision, he writes ‘whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command…stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed…’ Ozymandias had killed himself inside. He thinks he has mortality, driven on by overconfidence; he’s oblivious to the actual truth.
He couldn’t recognise himself anymore, when he saw himself, the sculptor had done as he asked; it’s simply how he thought of himself as. Inside he thought that it was beautiful. Outside, everyone saw the true him. Twisted, no longer one of nature’s creations. Nature has tried to cover it up by the statue ‘[standing] in the desert’, the land which the ‘king of kings once ruled, the one Ozymandias built, is diminished. Love doesn’t last forever. All that is left is an unwanted, broken down stone figure. Decrepit. Not exactly retelling and living a history but not exactly dead. Emotionless.
This is backed up by Shelley’s words ‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.’
These poems enable me to fluxuate with words, draw up similes. But love is nothing to be played with, it is what some people live on, keep going, and knowing they have something to try with all their might for. Love can diminish, with time. Equally powerful, almost the oldest forces that have remained on our planet, far before we did.
You can imagine an hourglass, tipped up the other way, watching the time particles dripping away; well this is just what life is. Love can be depicted as sands, deserts, never ending, when you start it, it is fresh, you feel like nothing will go wrong. Stretching on forever, with every step there is a new peak on the sand dune. Love does eventually die off, one by one, for the hourglass makes that so, we youngsters do not see what our elders see. We haven’t experienced a thumbnail’s worth that they have. But that is why we live young and die old, so we can. So we can experience love, loss, pain, anguish, erotic desires, wanting and even petty crushes.
Poems are only the basis on which you can mean something, say something else and still get what you want. Share you thoughts deeply with breaths; BUT don’t break the chain, for that shatters the image. As you now know, shattering the image could leave to devastating effects. Effects that could scar you, from one end of your heart to the other, through the ‘crimson’ blood running through your veins, to that ‘invisible’ feeling of desolation.
