Formalist View of The Sick Rose

                             

The Sick Rose

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

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.

*Formalist View*

     The poem, "The Sick Rose" has two stanzas with four lines each. Meter is free; and there are rhyming words in the second and fourth line of each stanza ("worm"-"storm";"joy"-"destroy"). In the first line 'O Rose thou art sick', the speaker is talking to a rose. Lines three and four have enjambment, and these two lines describe the 'invisible worm' or depict its action. The second stanza tells us about what happens to the worm; it 'has found out thy bed'. The antecedent "thy" refers to the "rose" in the first stanza. The second line 'of crimson joy' modifies the word "bed", considering also that there is an enjambment. The last two lines show what the worm has done to the rose. The antecedent "his" which refers to the worm with the 'dark secret love' destroyed the life of the rose.

Point of View: The poem carries a third person point of view, and the speaker is omniscient since he knows everything all throughout the story. The narrator was even able to give comment to the character, 'thou art sick'.

Setting:  The lines 'That flies in the night' ;'In the howling storm:'; 'Has found out thy bed', reveals something about the setting of the story, which can be considered as paradoxical to reality. Of course when you hear the word "rose", the very first picture that would come into your mind is "rose in a vase" or "rose in the garden". The title, however, depicts its condition, 'The Sick Rose', whereby we can infer that the literal rose might be withered or something. 

Characters:The poem has two characters: the rose and the worm, and also has a foil(minor character) who is the speaker himself. The flat characters are physically described in the poem, "the sick rose", and "the invisible worm". The foil is the one that points out the characteristics of the protagonist as observed in the poem.

Symbols: There are private symbols in the poem which can be understood only through the context. For example, the word "rose" may suggest a deeper meaning than a flower only. The "worm" also, being described as invisible, is technically a symbol for something or somebody. Lastly, "crimson" prior to the word "joy" is not just mainly a modifier of the word, but it connotes something unusual.   

Theme: In "The Sick Rose", William Blake concludes that "a dark, secret love could destroy a life."