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The Sick Rose


             Although the "The Sick Rose" is not lengthy, there is a lot to consider within the poem. It is a fantastic example of the Romantic period of poetry writing. The use of metaphorical speech and the story within William Blake's piece outline his beliefs about life. Blake believed that imagination cannot exist without reason and good cannot exist without evil. This poem portrays a loss of innocence in a manner that only Blake could establish. .
             William Blake was a poet that believed in using metaphorical speech in order to convey the message he was trying to give to his audience. Blake's first example of this is his use of 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 breaking the hymen of a female during intercourse. Blake leads his readers to believe that the invisible worm must have raped the woman because he refers to the occurrence as a "howling storm".
             William Blake was a romanticist and naturally his beliefs reflected his style of writing. He believed that good cannot exist without evil, and evil cannot exist without good. Blake uses the innocent girl or "rose" to show the existence of good within the poem. The roses purity and innocence are what represent the good, however with the presence of good comes evil in the form of the "howling storm". The co-existence of good and evil is also proven because of the evil that came out of the worm trying to get some sort of sexual satisfaction.


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