The Sick Rose

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1794

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Loss of Innocence

Blake’s use of the discourse surrounding sexual exploitation and female virginity to describe the rose’s encounter with the worm assumes that the rose’s original state was a virginal state of innocence. While the discourse around female virginity, in particular, holds less cultural weight in the western consciousness than it did in Blake’s time, it is nevertheless an important component of “The Sick Rose.” Blake uses language of sexual experience and loss of sexual innocence, in the poem, as a metonym for loss of innocence more generally. The connection between the “invisible worm” and the flower’s garden “bed” in Blake’s poem and the Genesis narrative of humanity’s fall from the innocence of the Garden of Eden points directly to Blake’s intention to talk about innocence more generally (Lines 2, 5).

The way Blake characterizes the rose’s loss of innocence is particularly noteworthy. The rose is not only made “sick” through its experience with the worm (Line 1), it is destroyed (Line 8). Blake suggests that the road from a state of innocence to one of experience is traumatic, perhaps traumatic enough to kill relatively fragile objects. The word “life” in the final line, “Does thy life destroy,” however, could be read to mean “lifestyle” or “livelihood” rather than physical existence. In this way, Blake points toward the radical change in how one lives their life as an innocent child and as an experienced adult. The transition from child to adult can be traumatic and life-ending in the sense that people’s lives change so dramatically between these two periods that they could hardly be called the same.

This connection between the rose’s experience and human maturation is reaffirmed by the rose’s passivity. In both cases, experience comes as a matter of course. Even if one does not seek out experiences, the maturation process still continues, and experiences are gained accidentally. Like the “invisible worm” (Line 2), experiences come even when they are unwelcome or unexpected.

The Corrupting Power of Experience

Though experience is as inevitable as growing older, “The Sick Rose” suggests that the process of maturation and development is not neutral. The speaker addresses the rose and aligns their experience with a “sick[ness]” that will eventually “destroy” the flower (Lines 1, 8); the speaker also sees the experience as the product of “dark secret” (Line 7). These two characteristics of the worm’s interaction with the rose suggest together that the loss of innocence is something to be mourned and that the state of experience is one of corrupted innocence.

The poem posits the state of innocence as the default position. In doing so, it is in line with the Biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden. The poem’s depiction of the worm as an agent of experience and the ultimate cause of the rose’s death—whether total or metaphorical—present experience as a negative aspect, or something that takes away from the rose’s original state. Experience’s negative quality is most clearly seen in that it makes the rose “sick” (Line 1), taking away the rose’s health, and that it ultimately destroys the rose (Line 8), taking away its life. Through these negative qualities, it can be assumed that the state of innocence is accompanied by health, liveliness, and, if “life” is read to mean a way of life, authenticity.

“The Sick Rose,” then, best explores innocence through how experience corrupts it. The poem, by contrast, focuses on the negative effects of experience and presents few qualities of prelapsarian innocence. The poem’s only suggestion of such a quality is the flower’s bed, which is described as “Of crimson joy” (Line 6). The color “crimson” brings to mind the rose’s petals but is also the color of blood, while “joy” suggests the word’s Biblical definition as the hope and happiness that accompanies the recognition of God’s presence. Between the rose’s bodily health, crimson’s blood, and joy’s religious connotations, the poem presents innocence as a state of bodily and spiritual engagement with the world. Experience, then, complicates or disenchants those engagements.

Fragility of Physical Beauty

Flowers in poetry often work as symbols of beauty (See: Symbols & Motifs). In particular, the beauty that flowers represent tends to be transient—flowers themselves tend to only last a season—and are themselves fragile. Many flowers bloom in spring and summer, seasons traditionally associated with new growth and the prime of life, respectively, and so they often come to represent these ideas when personified. These traditional associations combine with the poem’s themes of childhood, innocence, maturity, and experience to suggest that the rose may be interpreted as a youth whose beauty fades as they approach adulthood.

Many cultures, including Blake’s, prize the physical qualities of youthful individuals over their elders. Though there are some exceptions, this appreciation of youthful beauty tends to favor effeminacy and fragility over all other qualities. The flower’s inevitable experience and resulting death, then, can also be read as the loss of physical beauty with age. Even without the worm’s influence, the flower would not last more than a season. The worm, in this reading, also embodies its traditional role in decomposition.