Like many others, Blake employed a central group of related symbols that form a dominant symbolic pattern in his Songs of Experience. His are the child, the father and God (Gleckner 37). No one of these symbols is fixed or single, but instead they work together as a unit by themselves (Bronowski 93). They represent the states of innocence, experience and a higher innocence. These major symbols provide the context for all the minor symbols that contribute to the songs (Gleckner 37). .
Experienced man spends a lot of time in a state of discontent. He is always hoping for something other than what he's got and always looking for a more blessed condition. Then, when he achieves or gets what he wants, he discovers it is something else he wants anyway. This could be what drives us forward in life, but it also ensures that we will never relax and enjoy the things we are blessed with.
In Blake's Ah! Sunflower, he feels pity for his flower and shows it by opening with a sigh. But, his pity is accompanied by a smile that signifies slight amusement. The sunflower is pathetic because of its mistaken attitude. It doesn't appear to do anything in life except long for a destination it will never reach. The sunflowers' desires are for an indefinite state of hoped-for fulfillment and it is worried by the endless travelling that keeps it in the same spot (Gillham 16-17).
The pattern is more complex than it appears at first. The image of the sunflower, in the first verse, leads us to the world of men. The second verse is inverted, beginning with the world of men, youth and the virgin. The underlying significance of the symbols leads us to the vegetation cycle which fits perfectly with the circular content of the poem.
There is an essential ambivalence of the poem that affects our whole outlook to its poetic meaning. The poem can be read as being confident and optimistic or as being pessimistic and even hopeless.
