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The Sick Rose

             Although the "The Sick Rose" is not lengthy, there is a lot to consider within the poem. It is a fantastic example of the Romantic period of poetry writing. The use of metaphorical speech and the story within William Blake's piece outline his beliefs about life. Blake believed that imagination cannot exist without reason and good cannot exist without evil. This poem portrays a loss of innocence in a manner that only Blake could establish. .
             William Blake was a poet that believed in using metaphorical speech in order to convey the message he was trying to give to his audience. Blake's first example of this is his use of the "rose" in the poem. Blake uses the rose as a metaphor for a young, pure and likely a virgin woman. In the poem, the rose becomes sick due to the appearance of the "invisible worm" and the storm that follows his appearance. The worm is supposed to symbolize a man and his pursuit of the young virgin. Blake reveals that this pursuit is not a welcome one by saying, "And his dark secret love/Does thy life destroy". Blake is showing that the act that the man or "invisible worm" has committed has ruined the woman in some way. The line "Has found out thy bed/Of crimson joy" refers to breaking the hymen of a female during intercourse. Blake leads his readers to believe that the invisible worm must have raped the woman because he refers to the occurrence as a "howling storm".
             William Blake was a romanticist and naturally his beliefs reflected his style of writing. He believed that good cannot exist without evil, and evil cannot exist without good. Blake uses the innocent girl or "rose" to show the existence of good within the poem. The roses purity and innocence are what represent the good, however with the presence of good comes evil in the form of the "howling storm". The co-existence of good and evil is also proven because of the evil that came out of the worm trying to get some sort of sexual satisfaction.


Essays Related to The Sick Rose

1. The Sick Rose

William Blake's "The Sick Rose" is a prime example of how this works. If the word "sick" never appeared in the title, then it would just be called, "The Rose." ... The entire tone and direction of the poem changes when you are talking about a rose that is sick. The very first line of the poem sets the tone for what is to follow, "O rose, thou art sick," (page 180, line 1). ... In the lines following the first, the speaker talks about what caused the rose to become sick. ...

  • Word Count: 256
  • Approx Pages: 1
  • Grade Level: High School

2. The Sick Rose

WILLIAM BLAKE: "THE SICK ROSE" William Blake, known for his excellent writing ability wrote a poem which I was intrigued by, "The Sick Rose." ... Perhaps the 1st line can explain this: "O rose, thou art sick!" ... Although our first visual of human conception of a rose may be just that, a flower, one senses much deeper in this Blake poem, "The Sick Rose". ... One might read "The Sick Rose", and find that William Blake is a very intense and talented writer, as I did. Through this observation one can see that William Blake wrote not only symbolically, but also opens our minds from t...

  • Word Count: 549
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: High School

3. The Sick Rose

In Blake's poem, "The Sick Rose," the rose is a symbol for a tree. The worm which infects the rose symbolizes a plague of locusts that comes to kill the rose/tree. ... The fact that the words "sick" and "rose" both have four letters is fundamental to the meaning of the poem, for Blake was 44 years old when he wrote it. He had also been sick for some time. ... In the end, we all die, just as the rose must die. ...

  • Word Count: 374
  • Approx Pages: 1
  • Grade Level: High School

4. The sick rose

THE SICK ROSE "The sick rose" is one of the many "Songs of Experience" written by William Blake. Like all his poems in this genre, The Sick Rose portrays the pure, sacred life of a child as having become contaminated or unholy as it reaches and experiences the trials of adulthood, as well as being burdened with the fault of materialism. Blake uses the Rose to portray a child since both are very pure and innocent but both have underlying dark sides or faults as one might say. ... The "Rose" in a similar manner, has thorns on its stalk, which spoil the...

  • Word Count: 303
  • Approx Pages: 1
  • Grade Level: High School

5. Critical Essay: The Sick Rose

Critical Essay: The Sick Rose In the poem "The sick Rose" by William Blake, can be interpreted in many different ways. It is about someone, telling a rose, that it is sick. ... The rose represents love, and it is sick, and the poem suggests that love is sick as well. ... "The sick rose" is made up of two verses, both four lines long. ... This appears in rose, sick, invisible, flies, storm, crimson, secret, does and destroy. ...

  • Word Count: 347
  • Approx Pages: 1
  • Grade Level: High School

6. William Blake's Sick Rose

In the poem The Sick Rose by William Blake the subject is a women on her psychological and physical sick bed. ... The Rose is not only a flower but also a woman; and the invisible worm is a sexual transmitting disease and/or lie, caused by an extra marital affair, that is destroying the "flower". ... As well as similes Blake uses imagery as an element in painting his portrait of a "sick Rose". Blake's choice of an "invisible worm" forces an image of a mass of destruction moving undetected through "the Rose". ... Blake's use of imagery paints a clearer picture of "the Rose" and w...

  • Word Count: 318
  • Approx Pages: 1
  • Grade Level: High School

7. A Critical Interpretation Of William Blake's The Sick Rose

A Critical Interpretation of William Blake's The Sick Rose O Rose, thou art sick. ... Blake uses the rose, which has historically signified femininity, to provide the reader with a sense of the homosexual's frail, feminine nature. The "invisible worm that flies by night", is a bold reference to the turbulent penis of the sick rose, whose debauched behaviors are performed as surreptitiously as possible amidst passionate caterwauling. ... It was Blake's strong religious convictions and social concerns that fueled the spirit of "The Sick Rose", as well as much of his othe...

  • Word Count: 556
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

8. William Blakes Tyger Tyger and the Sick Rose

WILLIAM BLAKE"S - "The Tyger" and "The Sick Rose" Welcome, welcome! ... Ladies and Gentlemen, while keeping in mind the features of Blake's poetry, I"d like to give you an insight on another one of his poems, "The Sick Rose". ... The "rose" is a symbol of experience and morality and is in a sense, esoteric. ... The Songs of Experience and The Sick Rose both remain true to the Romanticism period. ... He believed that the state of innocence could not last; therefore both his Songs and The Sick Rose coincide with this belief through the message conveyed. ...

  • Word Count: 1294
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

9. Rose for Emily

A Sick Rose for Emily "Thus she passed from generation to generation "dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse- (Faulkner 80). ... Though he had his ups and downs, as any writer does, in 1931 he wrote "A Rose for Emily,"" which seemed to spark his successful writing career that won him many awards including a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. "A Rose for Emily- portrays Miss Emily Grierson's, a physiologically unstable lady, life from her youth to her death. ... An example of this precision is the sentence from "A Rose for Emily" discussed in Alice Hall Petry&#...

  • Word Count: 791
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

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