The Sick Rose

Reading this incredibly short poem at first is a bit daunting to figure out. It's only 8 lines and everything seems to have a symbolic meaning. I really enjoy how they give you a couple paragraphs at the end of many poems to explore the meaning behind the poem, because it's a lot easier to start a base understanding of the poem if you don't know which way to start (although I do feel like it ruins a bit of the search to find out for yourself). Either way, the paragraphs below the story give a bunch of good examples of how the sick rose, and everything in this poem, is not your average symbolic icon; the sick rose is part of a world seperate of ours because EVERYTHING in the poem has seperate meanings. no longer can someone say "well obviously the invisible worm is referencing blah blah blah in the poem" because everything in the poem is already a reference to something externally from it. Thus, as the info at the bottom of the poem tells, you need to know more about William Blake to understand this poem (the way he writes, the topics he writes about, any other poems that are part of the same universe as this one, etc).

having said that, I do feel as though the sick rose is something that has become sick because of this invisible worm. it would seem as though this worm has gone behind the rose's back and the darkness he represents has somehow made a sickening impact on the rose. then again, because the rose's sickness is mentioned in the beggining, the rose could already be sick, merely the invisble worm has exploited its sickness to utterly destroy it. It'll be intersting to hear other interpretations and other background info about Blake to get the full story.