... the "rose" in the poem. Blake uses the rose as a metaphor for a young, pure and likely a virgin woman. In the poem, the rose becomes sick due to the appearance of the "invisible worm" and the storm that follows his appearance. The worm is supposed to symbolize a man and his pursuit of the young virgin. Blake reveals that this pursuit ... is not a welcome one by saying, "And his dark secret love/Does thy life destroy". Blake is showing that the act that the man or "invisible worm" has committed has ruined the woman in some way. The line "Has found out thy bed/Of crimson joy" refers to bre...

• Word Count: 398
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... hence the title. Blake uses the rose, which has historically signified femininity, to provide the reader with a sense of the homosexual's frail, feminine nature. The "invisible worm that flies by night", is a bold reference to the turbulent penis of the sick rose, whose debauched behaviors are performed as surreptitiously as possible amidst passionate caterwauling ... with any question as to the private nature of homosexual behavior in the time and place during which it was written. It may have been aberrant for the author to have been any more forward in symbolizing such matters. The pu...

• Word Count: 556
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... is inevitable that this sweetness will be washed away by the strongly influential norms of society and craving for all worldly things. The "Rose" in a similar manner, has thorns on its stalk, which spoil the beauty and innocence that it portrays to all. The "invisible worm" illustrates adulthood and all that accompanies it. This is so because like a worm that weaves its ... " howling storm ", because like a storm it sweeps one away rendering one helpless and with no other but to follow society and all that goes along with it. Man's "dark secret love", i.e. his love for materialism destr...

• Word Count: 303
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

... as an active creative force. In his Songs of Experience, he constantly asks questions in relation to the creation of Man which has been taken over by the imagination. For example: "What immortal hand or eye; Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" His use of rhetorical questions has a great ... and expression of personal experience. Many Romantic figures were discontented with their world. In order to escape modern life, Romantics had a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the folklore and legends, nature and the supernatural. From his early years, Blake experienced visions of angels and ...

• Word Count: 1294
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... was fatal. Also, the idea of death spreading is accomplished further as syphilis not only could harm the man and girl involved in the sexual act, but could also pass on to the man's wife and any children she later birthed. An appropriate contrast to "The Sick Rose" is "The ... to the flowers are vastly different. In "The Sick Rose" the flower; considered a national symbol of love and beauty, is destructed by a worm; a symbol for jealously and fear when considering the "eating away" we"d usually associate with worms, of a phallic suggestion, and an unwelcome one at that, and even perhaps ...

• Word Count: 1020
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography

... is a period of experience and innocence. This is a period of frivolity and naivety. Childhood is also a period where adults represent justice and honesty. For children they can't be wrong. But most of the time, disappointments come from them. Children have their own world and illusions . They need to protect ... the lexical field of jail which reinforces the idea that the boy withdraw into oneself and showing that innocence act on the human as an invisible force preventing to sea the realties:" Sruggling in my father's hands, Striving against my swadling bands; bound and weary I though b...

• Word Count: 1858
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School