EXTEND – The Sick Rose

Blake personifies both the characters of this poem to give them agency. Match the expressions (1-6) to the human-like aspects (A-F) they wish to express.

The Rose:
1 O Rose, thou art sick       ________
2 bed of crimson joy       ________

The Worm:
3 invisible worm       ________
4 flies in the night       ________
5 dark secret love       ________
6 does thy life destroy       ________

A A place for rest or intimacy.
B Someone who acts under the cover of darkness.
C Someone who keeps secrets.
D Someone who tends to hide.
E The act of bringing about someone's downfall.
F Someone who is ill.

Read the text taken from Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which he speaks of his theory of the complementary opposites. Based on what you have read and the poem The Sick Rose, decide if the following statements are true or false. Then look at the prompts below and write some extra reflections in your exercise book. You can use the final text and your reflections as revision material for your test.

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is heaven. Evil is hell.
(From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, W. Blake)

Prompts:
1 Pick one word or image from The Sick Rose that shows innocence and one that shows corruption. Does the poem show these opposites in balance or in destructive conflict? Explain your answer using lines from the poem.
2 Blake often criticised institutions and social rules. In The Sick Rose, does the poem suggest that repressing natural impulses or emotions because of rules or religion, makes them harmful? Explain using what you have read about Blake and the poem.

Read the passage and complete the answers to the questions using only one word.

1 What is the thing the speaker is talking to in the poem? A ________.
2 In what state is it? It is ________.
3 Who has found it out? A ________.
4 How is it described? As ________.
5 What does it do to the rose? It ________ it.

Read the paragraph about the possible different meanings of The Sick Rose and complete the text with the words given.

As a starting point, the poem can be read as a story about the corruption of ________ by the harsh realities of the world. The Rose is an object of ________, but it is attacked by the 'invisible worm', with a ________ secret love that destroys the Rose's life.
Building on this idea, people have read the poem in other ways. Some see the Rose as the symbol of ________ love that succumbs to the harmful effects of sexual desire. They point to how the worm ________ the rose's 'bed of crimson', which is a strong image of ________.
Building on this idea, the poem has also been seen as a powerful critique of the ________ values of Blake's time. These values taught that sex was ________ and led to abnormality. In this reading, the worm's dark secret love represents the repressed ________ that distorts natural sexuality, ultimately destroying the rose's joyful life.