The Sick Rose

The Sick Rose

         “The Sick Rose” by William Blake introduce three life forces to us: a rose, a worm and a storm.  All three forces are connected to life and nature.  Blake starts the poem with “O Rose, thou art sick /” (128), he discuss how one evil thing can destroy a beautiful thing like a rose.  One small worm has the power to destroy this beauty in nature.  The worm wants to live in this rose and make a nest in this flower and by doing that the rose becomes sick.  Blake uses this metaphor to show us nature of man ⎯ always ready to destroy. This is what has happened in industrialized London.  Men came, built their big factories and managed to destroy nature  - rivers, forests and small towns.  

        “The Sick Rose” gives a sense of discontentment.  A worm inside the rose while a storm is “howling” outside. The storm comes at night bringing the invisible worm with it. One can almost feel the turmoil created by these two harms in the poem as well as the experience created by the word “howling.”  When reading the first stanza of the poem, the reader experiences distress.  Storms and insects are two destroying forces of nature.  The very thing that created it destroys the beautiful rose: nature and God.  Soon darkness and death will follow and the beautiful rose will no longer exist.  Blake creates a feel of gloom and discomfort with the storm and the thought of dead roses.  It’s not a beautiful picture he gives to neither his readers nor a poem of hope.

        Blake makes use of anapestic diameter in this poem, “The Sick Rose” with substitution in many of the lines.  The diameter helps with the rhyme scheme as the rhymes add to the poem’s meaning. Two beat lines contribute to the poem’s ominous feel and premonitions.  The poem has only eight lines but Blake manage to say a lot with these lines.  The lines are simple and easy to read and understand.  

        Blake writes “The invisible worm /” (128) but it does not mean the worm is invisible. The worm is too small to see or may even be hidden inside the rose. “The invisible worm /” (128) is a clever metaphor for the worm’s quiet act of destruction.  The worm is “invisible” while the storm is “howling, a clear contrast between visible and invisible forces of nature yet together they have the capacity to destroy, but the worm being at the heart of the rose has the most power to damage and eventually cause death.  

        “Of crimson joy, /” (128) tells us the rose is of a dark red color almost like blood, and can be seen as a symbol of life and joy.  The rose is supposed to express joy, life and beauty yet it is in the process of being ruined by a dark force and will soon be dead.  The worm has found the beautiful rose and even though the worm depends on the rose, it keeps on devouring its source of food.  Blake was definitely a visionary – he could look at one rose and see life and nature suffer.  He realized early that humans and other forces out of human control are violating both nature and happiness in life.  

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