Blake’s ‘The Sick Rose’ acts in contrast to ‘Blossom’ in the Songs of Innocence, perverting its images of Spring-like growth into those of irreversible decay. The poem’s form is extremely compact, consisting of two quatrains with a rhyming scheme of ABCB, which produces an ominous rhythm. Its brevity allows for multiple interpretations, especially alongside an ambiguous use of imagery, but set in the wider context of the Songs and of the author’s poetic vision, it broadly represents a fall from the state of innocence.
The Rose
The rose itself symbolises this innocence, and suggestions that it represents love, nature and even pre-industrial England fall under this more encompassing category. The speaker opens by apostrophising the rose, immediately setting a tone of despair that is intensified by the epithet of “sick”, which carries a larger sense of permanency than alternatives such as ‘unwell’ or ‘ill’. The rose resides in a “bed”, which is an equivoque denoting both a flower bed and a human one. The sexual undertones are elevated by the evocation of “crimson joy”, which is almost oxymoronic as the said colour is distinctly sinister, often used to describe the appearance of blood and therefore tying into the poem’s suggestions of death. A literal death is not suggested, however, but a figurative one, as the rose's life is irreparably "destroy[ed]".
The Worm
The worm, meanwhile, symbolises the destruction of this unspoiled state, its appearance evoking biblical images of the serpent in Eden. Indeed, the fact that it “flies” derives from events in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ (a work that Blake drew significant influence from), in which Satan flies through Chaos in order to tempt Adam and Eve. However, this concept opposes the natural state of a worm as earthbound, therefore suggesting that it symbolises something more sinister than death - in this case, the fall of mankind. The worm is also described as “invisible”, which links to Blake’s overarching view that moral corruption is due to a faltering state of mind, rather than any material deficits. Its “dark secret love” connotes feelings of jealousy and possessiveness that are explored elsewhere in the Songs, whilst also evoking the guilt integrated with sexuality in the conservative ethos of the late 18th century.
The Significance
This poem is therefore a microcosm of the Songs themselves, relying on a mixture of imagery, both sexual and religious, to portray what is ultimately Blake's foremost theme in this collection of poems – namely, the corruption of innocence.
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