Renaissance: Impact on English Literature

The Sick Rose: Four level meanings

The Sick Rose

-         William Blake

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Literal comprehension:

The poem 'The Sick Rose' is composed by English romantic poet, William Blake. It is a short lyrical poem composed in two stanzas with four lines (it has two quatrains) in each stanza having abcd ABCB rhyming pattern. Though it is a very simple poem in its literal sense, is very rich in symbolic meaning. Literally, it talks about the destruction of the life of the Rose due to sickness caused by invisible worm with its dark secret love. On the other hand, it is very powerful symbolically and has the association with different meanings. The rose represents several concepts like love, female, innocence, honesty, purity, truthfulness, nature, etc. similarly, invisible worm represents any unseen or mysterious force that causes the destruction of every virtues of the life of the social beings.

Interpretation:

The poem,' The Sick Rose' is about the destruction of the life of a female due to unwanted pregnancy caused by rape or any other physical relationship. It is about the shame of caused by the loss of virginity. Moreover, the poem is about the hatred of the poet regarding prostitution that transmits the diseases which ruins the life of the people of the society. In addition, it is the immortality of the love that ruins the life of the person. It even can be said that the poem talks about the relationship between the life of innocence and the life of experience. It shows how life with innocence is shattered by the experience with selfishness, corruption, violence, etc. It is about the misery of the life of innocent, ordinary people of the society due to the selfishness, vices and immortality of the so-called powerful people.

Critical Analysis:

The poem is based on the binary opposition representing virtues and vices or good or bad aspects of the human society. There are few words like 'rose', 'love',

'joy',etc. representing the good aspects of the life whereas the majority of words like 'sick', 'storm', 'dark', etc representing bad aspects of the life in the poem. This shows how goodness is always surrounded by evil forces in the society. It is based on mysticism that within the few lines, few words of the poem, poet has successfully woven the ideas like love, human society, nature, etc. however some questions obviously arise while studying the poem that is only sick rose enough for demonstrating the bad aspects of the human society? What does the invisible worm that flies in the howling storm means here in the poem? Does the crimson joy lead the life to the destruction?

Assimilation:

Although the some ideas of the poem, 'The Sick Rose' are argumentative, it ultimately succeed to touch the real innocence and experiences of the human life. After critically examining the poem, I came to recall the story,' Euta premko antya' by Usha Kiran Regmi.