The sick rose by william blake

Presentation on The sick rose by william blake.

1. Analysis of poem: “The Sick Rose” Laraib Zahra Presented By:

2. “The Sick Rose ” 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.

3. Introduction "The Sick Rose" is a poem by William Blake. The poem mentions through the symbols of the rose and the worm, how intense experience preys upon unpolluted innocence. The first publication was in 1794, when it was included in his collection titled Songs of Experience as the 39th plate.

4. Summary The speaker, addressing a rose, informs it that it is sick. An “invisible” worm has stolen into its bed in a “howling storm” and under the cover of night. The “dark secret love” of this worm is destroying the rose’s life.

5. Like in many of Blake’s poems, an exclamation mark in used where he comments on an issue that seems obviously atrocious to him, but the rest of the world is seemingly oblivious to it as they do nothing to change it. “Rose” – could symbolize the natural world. Could symbolize virginity and purity, as corrupted by a new societal norm of chaos and promiscuity that came with industrialization.

6. Could also refer to love, in that the sanctity of love and marriage have been corrupted: roses given as a token of love . ‘sick’ = the decay and death of the natural world, the death of traditional and Romantic notions regarding love and virginity. ‘Rose’ – connotations of beauty, could suggest the death of beautiful notions . The Rose, as an inanimate object, cannot realize that it is sick so can do nothing to prevent its death .

7. Poet “William Blake“ William Blake was a 19th century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age. His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages, and he has been deemed both a major poet and an original thinker.

8. Blake's artistic ability became evident in his youth, and by age 10, he was enrolled at Henry Pars's drawing school, where he sketched the human figure by copying from plaster casts of ancient statues. At age 14, he apprenticed with an engraver. Blake's master was the engraver to the London Society of Antiquaries, and Blake was sent to Westminster Abbey to make drawings of tombs and monuments, where his lifelong love of gothic art was seeded. The Young Artist

9. The Maturing Artist In 1779, at age 21, Blake completed his seven-year apprenticeship and became a journeyman copy engraver, working on projects for book and print publishers. Also preparing himself for a career as a painter, that same year, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art's Schools of Design, where he began exhibiting his own works in 1780. Blake's artistic energies branched out at this point, and he privately published his  Poetical Sketches  (1783), a collection of poems that he had written over the previous 14 years.