What is the deeper meaning of Blake's "The Lily"?

Question

The poem "The Lily" by William Blake must be one of the shortest of his [*Songs of Innocence and of Experience* collection](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1934/1934-h/1934-h.htm), only four lines long: > The modest Rose puts forth a thorn, The humble sheep a threat’ning horn: While the Lily white shall in love delight, Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright. Clearly there must be some hidden meaning behind this. Blake's poems tend to have a lot of religious themes, either overt or in subtext, and it's quite implausible for one of the Songs of Experience to be just a description of nature. Also, I can't really see anything "experience"-related in the surface meaning. Most of the *Songs of Experience* have something dark or threatening about them, but this seems very benign. Understanding the subtext would probably help me to understand its placement in this collection. Why is it significant that the Lily has no sharp or threatening parts? **What do the Rose, the sheep, and the Lily symbolise?** (Is it significant that the sheep is *not* described as a lamb, which is a recurring motif in Blake's poetry?) I've got good answers to questions like this here before. Hoping to get lucky again.

Answer 1

"The modest Rose puts forth a thorn, The humble sheep a threat’ning horn: While the Lily white shall in love delight, Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright." 

The Rose, symbolic of love, is a two-edged sword. Love is at once the purist gift, the highest attainment, and yet the source of the deepest of wounds. Love's innocence, betrayed, breeds self-protective thorns which inevitably lead to disaster, as the purity of love itself is stained by its need to protect itself. It falls from grace, one might say, and becomes, thereby, by experience, modest.

The sheep is the matured lamb, the experienced and thus now altered version of the innocent lamb who reminds us whom we ourselves reflect when we reside in our true nature, the source of infinite love itself.

A Lily is historically and religiously a symbol of purity. Only by a connection to inner purity, may one delight in love and beauty. Purity deserves these delights; thorn and threat by their very nature forfeit them.

(The Rose is made modest, the sheep humbled.... Only the Lily, forever pure, rises above in glory.)