The Sick Rose
by William Blake
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
I was stranded in the airport recently waiting for a (very late) plane to arrive. Mooching in the newsagents I got myself a paper and a large pot of muesli yogurt. Opening up the newspaper (Guardian) a little booklet fell out called The Romantic Poets: Blake. I picked it up.
It’s years since I looked at Blake. I first encountered the Songs of Innocence and Experience at university and suffice to say I hated it. I loathed it for its simplistic tweeness, its apparent sentimental invocation of God and religion, its ugly “dittyness”. In fact, I think I lost a good friendship over these poems, so how strange that I change my mind now.
I was immediately struck with the power and immediacy of having just a few short poems reproduced in a page. It allowed me to look at them with more vigour and concentration – allowed them to emerge away from my university encounter with them. And I found myself engaging with them anew.
I would love to look at the whole of Songs of Innocence and Experience here, but I am being strict. Instead I am going to look at just one poem from Songs of Experience, described by Philip Pullman in the introduction to the Guardian’s Romantic Poets booklet as “One of the most mysterious of his lyrics”.
One of the most mysterious of his lyrics? As I sat in the airport chomping on my muesli, I read it and reread it. But surely it is quite straightforward? It doesn’t take a closet “Carry On” Film addict to work out it is talking about sex – unmistakably, unashamedly. I don’t need to point out all the imagery, do I? The worm…ahem…phallic symbol anyone? The bed of crimson joy… the worm burrowing into the said crimson bed etc etc. The howling storm… It couldn’t be simpler, or more straightforward. This is, after all, a Song of Experience.
But what exactly is Blake saying with this poem and how far are we expected to take the symbolism? On the one hand, the poem can be about love itself – love is the sickness, love is what destroys the rose… On the other hand, as I read further through the little Guardian booklet, the juxtaposition of poems from different collections in different order – many of which I had not considered properly before – lead me to make connections I might not have previously.
Take this line, again from Songs of Experience, from the poem, “London”.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
“Blights with plagues the marriage hearse”…This is a strong line and a really contemporary line for the time in which Blake lived. This is no airy fairy poetry here, but a direct reference to prostitutes and the city he sees right under his nose. “Hearse” with all its connotations of death. The “plagues” – well you can’t get much stronger than the word “plague”. Taken in relation to these lines, The Sick Rose can be seen to offer up rather stronger imagery - there is the suggestion of contamination (the worm is “invisible”) or disease. This could be read as being about emotions: infidelity, perhaps, blighting and killing love…or (more probably in my view) it could be talking about that real plague, that terrible disease that blighted real peoples’ relationships and lead to so many horrific and painful deaths. Syphilis.
Is The Sick Rose dying of love or dying of sex? Or both?
The worm, with its phallic symbolism, can also imply disease and death. The rose is eaten by a worm, just as we are eaten by worms in death. It is a powerful image, an image of rotten love, diseased love. An image perhaps that encapsulates the hypocrisy of that time.
I have long been mystified by the reference to “his dark secret love”. What is secret about the worm’s love for the rose, I thought. But, again, is Blake talking about the worm’s “dark secret love” for the rose ? Or does “his dark secret love” refer to other loves, other unacceptable desires: not such a surprising idea in Blake’s day in a London rife with prostitution and where marriage was the socially acceptable surface that covered a multitude of other less socially-acceptable “sins”.
But you don’t even have to go so far as to think this poem is about disease. As soon as I read it I was put in mind of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. The worm (the serpent) the rose (the apple/fruit)…I should stress here that I am not by any means a religious person but I have long been interested in the poetry of the Book of Genesis.
In some ways, the Adam and Eve story is a coming of age story: the ultimate Song of Innocence and Experience. With the fall being experience – taking the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge leading to self-consciousness, knowing the difference between right and wrong and banishment from the Garden of Eden. I believe that Blake is deliberately referencing the Fall - not in religious terms, but in societal terms – in Songs of Innocence and Experience, but that is a post for another day.
But the bit that no one ever seems to mention very much – or at least they certainly didn’t when I was at school – was Eve’s punishment. Childbirth.
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
These days, in the west, it is hard to imagine that childbirth could be so dangerous. But in Blake’s day and still in parts of the world today – childbirth was and is a major killer. At the time these poems were published (in the late 1700s), many many women died in childbirth: young, fit women – it must have been a great tragedy for families and for relationships and, yes, for the men they left behind.
We do not need Syphilis and other nasties to make the point that, before times of contraception and antibiotics, love could literally kill you.
The mark of a good poem – a great poem – to my mind, is that it has music, even jarring music; it has something arresting in the images it creates in your mind, and it holds meaning – meaning that withstands all attempts to deconstruct it – that continues to stare out defiantly at us as we endlessly rip apart the Russian doll to find another, another and yet another, staring out at us beneath.
The Sick Rose is a tiny poem. A few lines long. But those few lines hold a multitude of interpretations…all of them adding, not subtracting from the main meaning. Whether it is the vulnerability of women in the face of men; the vulnerability of love in the face of infidelity; the vulnerability of the body in the face of syphilis or even the vulnerability of woman in the face of childbirth itself, The Sick Rose is all these things and more besides. Each interpretation does not negate, but rather resonates alongside the one that precedes it.
Sex. Death. Innocence. Experience. Eight lines, yet this poem has it all.
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For anyone interested in this poem, check out what I consider to be another masterpiece: Benjamin Britten’s setting of this “lyric” to music. What Blake does with words, Britten more than matches with music: creating an ominous elegy: sad, beautiful, eerie and dreadful. The fact that the worst, most spine-chilling note falls on “joy” gets me every time.
Fantastic article, Rosy – Blake is one of those poets I think I’ve spent my whole life chasing and there’s always something mysterious – something he’s so nearly saying but not quite – just round the corner of the words. The Sick Rose is one of my favourites. How he manages to make it so much more considerable than the sum of its parts is simply the mark of his genius, I think. And how wonderful also to read a poet who knows absolutely when his poem is finished, and who is not afraid of giving free rein to the power of tiny poems.
Great stuff, thanks!
Axxx
Wow, Rosy, I agree with Anne, that this was fantastic. The way you brought history & music & all the other aspects, as well as an anecdote to start us off. Very well done.
I’d also like to say that the poem can be taken literally, as a gardening subject, which was how I originally saw it, which make unpeeling all the layers even more fun.
Isn’t that funny? It would never even occur to me to read it literally. How to miss what’s right under one’s nose eh? But I think as it is a song of experience placed in the context it is in, it is just begging to be taken symbolically. But I wonder what it is that makes us decide something is to be taken literally or symbolically in the first place…Interesting topic in itself.
Anne – I am never sure how much I like Blake over all. Too often his poems strike me as rather lacking in music or maybe the kind of music I like. But this has long been a favourite of mine and others from Songs of INnocence and Experience strike me more and more with how interesting they are…even if I don’t totally love so many of them as actual poems.
I think another piece on Songs of Innocence and Experience might be in order…
The thing that has always struck me about this poem is about the “flying worm”. It is such a strange phrase, worms being associated with earth and the darker subterranean aspects of life. And why is it invisible? With poems of such brevity, Blake evidently picks his words with care – what is your take on these aspects, Rosie? In Tarot, Earth would be associated with material matters, and Air, where things take flight, with intellect and reason, these attributes being very destructive to intuition and natural passion.
To me, it’s about that creature “guilt” worming its way into someone’s mind, nibbling away and destroying ecstasy and the love of living life for the moment. What is more representative of ephemora than the rose, only at its most beautiful and physical best for such a short time?
That’s a very interesting interpretation, Melrose. I believe the poem can hold all these meanings simultaneously. I am inclined to see the poem as more material – more involved with society and the outside world because of the nature of Songs of Experience overall – which is very much concerned with the way we see the ills of society (I believe). The phrase that sticks out strongest for me is “bed of crimson joy” which I cannot see other than being a very sexual phrase. To me, the poem is clearly sexual. But, of course, that wouldn’t preclude jealousy as an interpretation of the worm either…
Of course, it doesn’t say “flying worm” it says “that flies in the night” which can either mean flies as in wings and flight…or it could mean flees and takes flight – as in rushes away, runs away. I prefer the former meaning, though and it’s an interesting idea of yours that it represents thought.
I agree it’s a curious image that pulls in two directions. Invisible worm can suggest that it is a worm of a thought, as you say. It can also suggest something that invades that you cannot see – a disease, a contamination. or even jealousy – yes. It could even suggest insemination….To me this poem contains all these layers. But because this poem is placed in “experience”, I favour a more earthy interpretation at least at its foundation…upon which can rest other layers of meaning. Even if you say the key imagery of the poem suggests sex…this sits very comfortably with further meanings – such as that love is destroyed by distrust or that jealousy destroys love. But I would very much see the sexual elements as fundamental. I believe that is what Blake is conjuring first and foremost. He could not – surely – have used words like “bed of crimson joy” or “dark secret love” otherwise. In my view.
The beauty of a poem such as this, though, is that no matter what Blake’s purpose, it can mean so many different things to different people. I am always tempted to view it in context (which is why I was struck by lines in other poems in the Songs) to try and work out what Blake himself was trying to say. But as he can’t tell us, all our versions are valid. It is the sign of a great poem that it can hold all our versions simultaneously. Which is where its power lies.
Thanks so much for the comment, Melrose. Very interesting to hear everyone else’s versions too.
Fascinating review, and a great discussion, to which I’ve really nothing to add – any resonances this poem has for me are all there. But I do want to thank you for two things, Rosy – one is for making mention of Britten’s astonishingly weird and beautiful setting of the poem in the Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings. I cannot even read this poem anymore without hearing those cool thin notes in my head – has to be Peter Pears and Dennis Brain for me. The other is for reproducing the illustrations of Blake’s page, and his cover for Songs of Innocence and Experience. It is all part of the extraordinary work. I find Blake hard to love, even harder to understand sometimes, but impossible to ignore.
Thanks for this fascinating and thought provoking review and discussion. As you say the mark of a good poem is one which readers can bring their own interpretation to and so there may be as many interpretations as there are readers.
Wonderful! Thank you. A multi-layered poem, from any perspective. I’d never thought of the syphilitic connection and, of course, it works: Blake was writing when a ‘night with Venus’ very often led to a ‘lifetime with Mercury’ (a treatment that could be almost worse than the syndrome but the only known contemporary remedy; as you probably know perfectly well already – sorry!). And the Britten setting is haunting, indeed. Memory ghastly, but didn’t Vaughan Williams set some of the songs of i/e to music also?
Blake is always so stunning in his simplicity (or seeming simplicity). And that cover is just ravishing. How Blake manages to be so powerful with such unadorned language is something to give all poets pause.
For a rather strange song that uses elements of The Sick Rose, have a listen to http://zoamorphosis.com/2010/02/zoapod-3-the-secret-domain-coil-and-blake/.
[...] 23, 2010 by rosyb Recently I wrote a piece on that tiny, yet powerful, poem: The Sick Rose, a single poem in Blake’s Songs of Experience. I discussed the sexual symbolism, related it [...]