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Love In The Sick Rose

Decent Essays

A Rose is common occurrence in everyday life, from romantic comedies to table decorations, however a rose symbolizing ones love is also clearly evident in poetry. In poetry roses not only represent love, but it’s frustrations. In Waller’s “Song” (“Go, lovely rose!”), Burns’s “A Red, Red Rose”, and Blake’s “The Sick Rose; the employment of imagery to create a lasting memory that may evoke pathos. Love is both a state of being and an emotion, and due to its complexity is hard to describe. A rose can represent the beauty of pure love, the perfection of new love, and the frailty of love and lust.Therefore, a rose is a perfect representation of love because of its versatility.

When discussing love and its frustrations a rose can represent the beauty of pure love. The idea of love is difficult to comprehend, pure love is described as perfection and beauty incarnated. In Edmund Waller’s poem …show more content…

Real love, although beautiful and sought over, is delicate and can be easily corrupted by desire. In William Blake’s somewhat erotic poem “A Sick Rose”, one follows the decay of a rose as a personified worm infects the flower. “And his dark secret love /Does thy life destroy” (“A Sick Rose,” 7-8). The decaydation of the rose is similar to the dissolution of a relationship that places sex above companionship, as the intense passion or joy experienced tarnishes the purity of said relationship. The most effective part of Blake’s poem is in fact the beginning of the poem, “O Rose thou art sick” (“A Sick Rose,” 1). This sad opening line sees the speaker telling the rose of its sickness meaning that the people in this relationship are unaware of their own deteriorating relationship. That being said, a rose is a good representation of the destructive consequences of mixing love with lust and

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