A Rose By Any Other Name

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A Rose By Any Other Name



While symbolism is found in both of Blake and Wordsworth’s works we have been studying in class, the images’ meanings and importance vary greatly in the two poems. However, both authors are able to use regular scenes in nature to represent deeper understandings of love, solitude and life.

As we have found in studying Blake’s Songs of Experience, the author loves to use symbolism to ‘mourn’ the harsh experiences of adulthood and how it can destroy what was once good and innocent. In Blake’s ‘The Sick Rose,’ a rose exists literally and as a literary symbol, most likely associated with love. On the surface, the poem seems to be speaking of a rose who has been infected by an ‘invisible worm’ that has crawled into its flower bed during a howling storm. The secret presence of the worm is destroying the sick rose, and the rose will soon die.

However beyond the literal meaning lies a metaphor, as is the case with almost all of Blake’s works. Much like in ‘London’, Blake uses the image of a worm, most commonly associated with filth and post-mortem decay, to represent the sexually transmitted Venereal disease and ultimately, death. The ‘bed’, which this disease creeps into, can be seen as both the literal flower bed of the rose as well as the bed of a woman, most likely a prostitute who is unknowingly carrying the disease. The ‘crimson joy’ of the rose represents both the prostitute’s sexual pleasure as well as her shame, as red is quite commonly associated with shame in literature from this time period. The last line of the poem suggests that since prostitutes were considered the outcasts and lowlifes of English society, the ‘dark secret’ of the diseased worm will go on unnoticed and will eventually lead to the woman’s death.

Wordsworth’s poem begins with metaphorical imagery as he describes himself wandering like a cloud until he encounters a field of daffodils...