What is the meaning of Blake's poem "The Sick Rose"?

Question

William Blake's very short poem "The Sick Rose", from his [*Songs of Innocence and of Experience*](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1934/1934-h/1934-h.htm), runs as follows: > 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. There's a surface meaning here about a rose being destroyed by parasites in the flowerbed (although I don't know what kind of worms "fl[y] in the night, In the howling storm" - does this line too have deeper significance, beyond specifying some particular members of the animal kingdom?) But the second verse at least has strong sexual undertones: the predator that destroys life with "his dark secret love" in "thy bed [of] joy" sounds a lot like a rapist or an incubus. I'm not sure what the rose symbolises in this reading of the poem though. In short: **what does this poem really mean?** I feel like I'm seeing half of the direct surface reading and half of the deeper hidden meaning, but not fully grasping either of them.

Answer 1

Blake's poetry helped define English Romanticism. These Romantics were a group of thinkers and artists reacting against some of the more sinister outcomes of the Enlightenment (coldly factual, reductive, calculating, exploitative scientific reason)--think of the ills of the Industrial Revolution (born from scientific invention and ambition). In isolation, "The Sick Rose" seems to be saying that all beauty or life eventually becomes sick and dies. With the addition of the "bed of crimson joy," though, your mind might drift toward a reference to venereal disease and sexual lust. Both are on the right path, but how does the reader bring these elements together to make cohesive meaning? Look at the poem's relationship to the rest of "Innocence and Experience" and think about Blake's own penchant for prophecy and view of the imagination as the only faculty capable of transcending the material world. Add to that an understanding of how the Romantics reacted to the Enlightenment (see above) and you might consider whether the rose could be a symbol of innocence (uncorrupted imagination) and the worm a symbol of experience (corruption). Could the poem be suggesting something about what happens to innocent (or imaginative) minds when they grow up? So many of Blake's poems feature children and the views of children (sometimes in harsh worldly or exploitative circumstances--see "The Chimney Sweeper"). Is this poem Blake's version of "the Fall" from the bible? Or is the rose a symbol of an entire world grown sick from some spiritual disease or imaginative (moral) failure? (Some people think of the Romantics as the first environmentalists.) Each of these ideas, working together, are defensible as long as you can provide contextual evidence. So treat these suggestions as springboards to let your imagination roam and make meaning of this seemingly simple, densely layered poem.