The Sick Rose

William Blake is one of the earliest and most influential poets and visual artists commonly associated with the British Romantic movement. Though Blake, born in 1757, is of an earlier generation than many of the British Romantics, his emphasis on nature, the body, and the power of human creativity places him firmly as one of the movement’s progenitors. Blake, however, is idiosyncratic in both his poetry and his visual art, and resists tidy classification.

An engraver by trade, Blake self-published most of his works as illuminated manuscripts that weave visual imagery and poetic imagery together including 1794’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Blake’s unique artistic style, coupled with his eccentric views of Christian theology, give his works a rich and individual depth. Blake’s later works are dense with idiosyncratic meanings and religious visions that can make them appear wholly disconnected from the sing-song works of Songs of Innocence and of Experience where “The Sick Rose” first appeared. Nevertheless, “The Sick Rose” is an exemplar of how Blake’s concerns about religion, corruption, and nature tend to permeate his works.

Content warning: In analyzing “The Sick Rose,” this study guide expands on metaphors of sex and potential sexual violence.

Poet Biography

William Blake was born in Soho, London, on November 28, 1757, the third of seven children. Blake’s father, a moderately successful hosier, had emigrated from Ireland to work in London. Though financially stable, Blake’s family was closer to the urban poor than the average family of a skilled trade worker. The Blake’s status was partially due to their position as Irish emigrants, and partially due to their religious beliefs. Blake’s parents were English Dissenters, likely Baptists, and had separated themselves from the Church of England. The Bible was one of Blake’s earliest influences, and from the age of four Blake began having divine visions.

Blake was mostly educated at home by his mother. At ten years old he attended a drawing school, and at fourteen he began an apprenticeship under engraver James Basire. The apprenticeship lasted seven years, and at age 21 Blake became a professional engraver. Engraving and painting remained Blake’s primary sources of income throughout his life, and most of his poetic works are accompanied with images and were originally published as engravings. Among other works, Blake has illustrated copies of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Blake married Catherine Boucher in 1782. Illiterate at the time of their marriage, Blake taught Boucher both how to read and how to work as an engraver. She was a valuable collaborator, helping Blake print many of his most famous works and adding color to the engravings that accompany his poems.

Blake published his first book of poems, Poetical Sketches, in 1783 to little notice. In 1789, he published Songs of Innocence, which would later be collected in 1794’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Both editions were printed and illuminated with engravings by Blake. Many of Blake’s best-known short poems come from these collections, including “The Sick Rose,” and “The Tyger.” Blake’s later poetry became increasingly concerned with detailing his religious beliefs as informed by his divine visions. The most significant of these include 1793’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which argues that good and evil are both necessary sides of God, and 1810’s Milton, which figures Blake as a reincarnation of John Milton. Blake’s later works are well regarded but rarely read due to their complexity and intensity.

Blake died in 1827, while working on engravings for Dante’s Divine Comedy. At the time of his death, Blake was a respected craftsman but unrecognized as a serious artist. During his lifetime, Songs of Innocence and Experience sold fewer than 30 copies, and his more esoteric poetry was viewed as evidence of mental illness. Both his paintings and poetry have since been celebrated—particularly by Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth—and he is frequently cited among England’s best visual artists and poets.

Poem Text

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.

Blake, William. “The Sick Rose.” 1794. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Blake’s “The Sick Rose” focuses around the central, titular image of a sick and dying rose. While the rose itself is not described except as “sick” (Line 1), the flower is the speaker’s presumed audience. The speaker opens the poem by saying to the rose “thou art sick” before illuminating the circumstances that have caused the flower’s illness. The speaker attributes the illness to “The invisible worm” (Line 2), who approached the rose “in the night / In the howling storm” (Lines 3-4).

In the second stanza, the speaker gives more particular details of the actions associated with the “invisible worm” (Line 2). The speaker states that the worm has discovered the flower’s “bed / of crimson joy” (Lines 5-6). This bed becomes a place where the worm enacts its “dark secret love” (Line 7), which the speaker views as the ultimate cause of the flower’s illness and eventual death.