Corpsey

bandz ahoy
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.

___

What do we make of this, then?

Fingers on buzzers please

509719307.jpg
 
Last edited:

luka

Well-known member
This was a big favourite of my dads. He would recite it sometimes if he'd had a drink. Very intense man. Scared people. Learned a lot from him.
 

luka

Well-known member
Blake doesn't think of sexuality as a source of sin but of delight. The vale of Beulah. I don't think,actually, that a definitive meaning can be gleaned from this poem. It's inherently mysterious but dark and secret I consider to be the operative words. Secrecy. Repression. Hypocrisy. Jealousy. These tend to be the sources of sin in Blake.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sus

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Oh wow so the worm could be the intrusion of judgement into the soft crimson world of sexuality?

I've never thought of it that way around. Assumed the conventional Christian narrative of sex and sin.

I heard a Devil curse
Over the heath & the furze
Mercy could be no more
If there was nobody poor

And pity no more could be
If all were as happy as we
At his curse the sun went down
And the heavens gave a frown

Down pourd the heavy rain
Over the new reapd grain
And Miseries increase
Is Mercy Pity Peace
 

version

Well-known member
There's the whole thing of worms eating the dead, living in and eating the earth too. It could be something to do with time and decay.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sus

jenks

thread death
Things unspoken, hidden, that's what eats away and destroys you. It's like in teh Poison Tree - when he speaks his 'Wrath' and his 'wrath doth end' but when he 'tells it not, my wrath doth grow'

It's also a woman's name which adds another layer...
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I don't think,actually, that a definitive meaning can be gleaned from this poem.

And thank Los for that!

A poem about mystery that is unsolvable.

Things unspoken, hidden, that's what eats away and destroys you. It's like in teh Poison Tree - when he speaks his 'Wrath' and his 'wrath doth end' but when he 'tells it not, my wrath doth grow'

Yeah - energy is eternal delight, reason (Urizen) sets limits. “Sooner murder an infant in it`s cradle than nurse unacted desires.”

In the introduction to my SOI&SOE the author suggests that the worm might be expected to transform into a butterfly. So he sees at as a caterpillar. But then, it's an "invisible" worm, that "flies".

The flying invisible worm is the most uncanny image, isn't it? It doesn't feel arbitrary or nonsensical, but it also doesn't seem explicable.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
start blaked

One story told by Blake's friend Thomas Butts shows how much the Blakes enjoyed the pastoral surroundings of Lambeth. At the end of Blake's garden was a small summer house, and coming to call on the Blakes one day Butts was shocked to find the couple stark naked: "Come in!" cried Blake; "it's only Adam and Eve you know!" The Blakes were reciting passages from Paradise Lost, apparently "in character."

:love:
 
  • Haha
Reactions: sus

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Does this poem evoke an emotion in you? Or is it just interesting?

My revelation last night was stimulated by the Audible book I was listening to of Blake, read very dramatically and emotively, like a sermon, not a crossword puzzle.

I have a tendency to view poems as crossword puzzles.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'd always assumed it was about STDs, which were shockingly common back in the not-so-good old days.

Interestingly, the worst of these at the time - syphilis, obviously - actually is caused by an 'invisible worm'. Or at least, Treponema pallidum, the bacterium responsible, is kind of worm-shaped:

Treponema_pallidum.jpg

Although this wasn't known until a century after Blake's time.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: sus

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
There is an obsession in romanticism with sickliness, isn't there? Keats worked at Guy's Hospital, of course.

Palsied/sickly etc.

There's a lot of the use of the word 'sweet' in Blake and the other Romantics, which is sickly for us, but also does have connotations of sickliness (the sweet smell of death).
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
So the rose is symbolic of innocence and purity - of the virgin mary

This is the innocence upon which the invisible worm, air-borne plague, descends

With its dark, repressive, insidious, cloaked love

Perhaps the repression of experience itself - or as a frightened response to experience

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
More reading

"In mythology the rose is associated with Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love who was often depicted adorned with roses around her head, feet and or neck. It is also said that a rose bush grew within the pool of blood spilled from Aphrodite’s slain lover Adonis. In Christian mythology, a rose bush was also said to have grown at the site of Christ’s death.

In the Tarot the rose is considered a symbol of balance. It expresses promise, new beginnings, and hope. Its thorns represent defense, physicality, loss, thoughtlessness. In the major arcana the rose appears on the Magician, Strength, Death and Fool cards. All of these cards hold strong meanings of balance and equilibrium.

In the classical era, the rose was sacred to a number of goddesses including Isis. The ancient Greeks and Romans also identified the rose with the goddesses of love, Aphrodite and Venus respectively. In Rome a wild rose would be placed on the door of a room where secret or confidential matters were discussed. The phrase sub rosa, or “under the rose”, means to keep a secret and is derived from this ancient Roman practice.

Christians in Medieval times identified the five petals of the rose with the five wounds of Christ. The rose later became associated with the Virgin Mary and was eventually adopted as a symbol of the blood of the Christian martyrs. A bouquet of red roses is used as a gift on Valentine’s Day which is a day celebrating the Christian Saint Valentinus."

https://www.flowermeaning.com/rose-flower-meaning/
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Just yesterday someone shared a photo of a rose tattoo and I exploded with rage about how naff a rose tattoo is

But what about a sik rose?
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
There's a William Gibson story, New Rose Hotel, which ends with the protagonist hiding in a coffin-like hotel capsule - a bed of crimson joy, as it were - while a stealth helicopter hovers overhead searching for him with an infrared camera. The Blake reference is never made explicit, but I reckon it's absolutely intentional.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: sus

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The rose now has none of its old symbolic power, does it? Its associated with romance in a rather tacky way. Surrounded by the distractions of the city and if not the city the internet, does anybody really look at a rose anymore? Or perhaps it's that the Christian belief system has collapsed, so a rose is no longer an image of intelligent design, it's just something that happened to happen.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sus
Top