Poetry Analysis

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My Interpretation of the Poem

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.

        The sick rose is a very ambiguous poem, open to
several interpretations as the images and objects in the poem can have various meanings. I am going to analyse different sections of the poem to then be able to give my overall reading of Blake’s poem.

A rose, can connote beauty, it can be a symbol love, represent loyalty and passion. Yet rose’s have thorns which draw blood, so in that respect the rose could suggest dubiousness, pain and even death. I interweaved these ideas and imagined the rose as a beautiful woman, who is seriously ill or dying. I came to this conclusion as rose is juxtaposed with the word ‘sick’ which emphasizes the illness and the tragedy of it all, as one so pure is being blackened. I interpreted the word ‘sick’ literally and thought the speaker is saddened that his beautiful rose has fallen ill.

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Next I looked at ‘the invisible worm’ and this image conjured up many ideas; perhaps the most obvious being an STI, presumably common in Blake’s time. I also perceive the phallic suggestion with the image of the worm and also the Biblical serpent. This could suggest the temptation the worm has over the beautiful rose and like the Biblical story, as a reader we infer like Adam and Eve, the rose will give in and deal with the consequences.  A worm is a destructive symbol, something that devours and eats other things, so unsurprisingly I thought of something pessimistic and ...

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