My Pretty Rose Tree, Ah! Sunflower & The Lilly

This section is a rather long analysis of a small collection of three Songs of Experience, each thriving off flower symbolism to convey certain messages and themes. Each of these poems explore the two contrary states of Innocence and Experience from differing perspectives, with each flower symbolising different themes in relation to the overarching contrary states.

My Pretty Rose Tree

A flower was offerd to me:

Such a flower as May never bore.

But I said I’ve a Pretty Rose-tree,

And I passed the sweet flower o’er.

Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree:

To tend her by day and by night.

But my Rose turnd away with jealousy

And her thorns were my only delight.

Form & Structure

The poem is formed of two heroic quatrains following an uncomplicated verse. The regular rigid rhyme scheme follows the theme of the poem of resisting change from innocence into experience. The metre is anapaestic, giving the poem a jaunty rhythm.

Stanza One

In being “offerd” to the speaker, this verb connotes unsolicited giving, implying the choice of accepting or rejection. The flower is personified as a rare temptress in being a flower “as May never bore”, the superlative language highlighting the feature of rarity, in contrast to the mundaneness of the “Pretty Rose-tree”.

But when the speaker has “passed” the flower, it has been interpreted that the speaker rejects his own personal growth, in that the flower represents experience. The speaker rejects change from innocence, and in doing so grounds themselves in naivety. It could also reflect how society is conditioned by organised religion to reject the ideas of free love, and remain shackled to the institutions of marriage and monogamy. Remember, Blake was a polygamist and believed in free love!

Stanza Two

The “Pretty Rose-tree” is given female personification by being referred to as “her”, suggesting that she is the speaker’s true love, or wife, whom he “tends” to.

The anapaestic metre is disrupted by the stresses on “jealousy”, thereby highlighting the word, which serves the purpose of demonstrating the strength of the negative emotion. This may also relate to the state of fallen humankind: its selfish selfhood. A main pleasure of this is exerting control over others under the disguise of protective love, jealousy therefore characterises this distortion of love.

But despite this “jealousy”, the speaker still takes delight from her “thorns”, which represent her jealousy, suggesting that they are the price he is willing to pay so that he can remain in an unchanging state of innocence, and because of his innocence, he is ignorantly unaware that their love is distorted by jealousy and possessiveness.

Like The Blossom, this poem is great for exploring the theme of love in Blake’s collection, so long as you link it back to the states of Innocence and Experience in doing so!


Next we move on to Ah! Sunflower, a poem evocative of death and the afterlife.

Ah! Sunflower

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,

Who countest the steps of the Sun:

Seeking after that sweet golden clime,

Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:

Arise from their graves and aspire,

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Form & Structure

The poem consists of two quatrains each composed of an ABCB rhyme scheme, while the metre is anapaestic, creating a lively jaunty rhythm. The ABCB rhyme scheme in the first stanza creates a cyclical monotony of the sunflower’s boredom on Earth.

  

Stanza One

This stanza has a positive tone concerning the sunflower’s desire. The symbol of the sunflower is significant. In legend, it was said to turn continually towards the sun. In mythology, the nymph Clytie dies from unrequited love for Hyperion, the sun god, and is transformed into a flower which tracks the sun. The sunflower is also traditionally seen as a source of life, and can therefore be used as life-affirming imagery.

The opening spondee slows the rhythm down to highlight the sunflower as a central symbol.

In Christianity the sun’s rising in the East is seen as a sign of resurrection, thereby eternal life. Therefore the flower turning to the sun denotes a desire for eternal life. This want of eternity is shown when the flower is described as being “weary of time”. Furthermore, reference to a “sweet golden clime” is evocative of death and the afterlife, and its positive description suggests it is superior to Earth, and therefore mortality. The switch to trochaic foot in this line creates a sense of urgency in the sunflower’s quest.

But Blake may perhaps be criticising this, given that the flower already has a sense of present fulfilment; Blake believed that the desire for eternal life belonged to those who didn’t have the courage to face other desires.

Stanza Two

The “Youth” and the “Virgin” connote innocence and naivety as they either “Arise from their grave” and aspire to reach this “golden clime” to regain their desires, or they are already in the “golden clime”, but it is a place of lifelessness, shown in the semantic field of almost waning language like “pined away”, “shrouded in snow” and “pale”. Blake is attacking conventional Christian beliefs of the true nature of the afterlife, which taught people to accept present suffering with the promise of a self-fulfilling afterlife. This encouraged the oppression of sexuality and other powers. Blake condemned this as the perspective of “fallen” humankind, the “mind-forg’d manacles” of oppression.

Critic Harold Bloom goes as far to describe this poem as:

“The lyric’s tone can be characterised as a kind of apocalyptic sardonicism.”

By this he means, it transcends pity in its preciseness and economic use of language, so much so that it invokes longings and nostalgias that nearly slip the censure past the reader.

Therefore, the poem serves to be a criticism of the conventional Christian teachings on the afterlife. Like in The Chimney Sweeper poems, Blake warns the reader not to passively acquiesce to the struggles of everyday life for the promise of heaven, rather to enjoy the pleasures of everyday life that the Church shamed and condemned.

And finally, we turn to the final poem of this collection, which, once again (and luckily) is very short.

The Lilly

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn:

The humble Sheep, a threatning horn:

While the Lilly white, shall in Love delight,

Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.

Form and Structure

This poem is only one quatrain with two closed rhyming couplets, suggesting axioms, which allows no question or argument. They also suggest harmony, but separate the “Lilly” from typical symbols of love. The first couplet follows a regular iambic rhythm, but is freed up by an alternation between anapaests and iambs in the third line.

Stanza One

The “Rose” represents sexual love, but also explores mortality by linking love and death together. The “thorn” is the rose’s physical reality, thus the love represented by the rose has a means of defence and the capacity to cause harm and pain.

The “Sheep” suggests innocence and simplicity from its biblical implications, but its “horn” once again reinforces the reality of something typically meek and mild having the capacity to cause harm and pain.

By describing these two symbols as “modest” and “humble”, which are both moral qualities, Blake invites the reader to contrast these symbols with the lilly, the descriptor of which follows the noun as opposed to preceding it. This distinction is also reinforced by the rhyme scheme, linking “thorn” and “horn” to “delight” and “bright”.

The “Lilly” in traditional Christian iconography represents virginity, while also associated with funerals, speaking of death not simply as an end but as a passing into eternal life.

Jacob Boehme wrote of the lily as symbol of the new world to come, and with that, a state of perfection.

But Blake rejects this, instead using the lily as a symbol of love that neither defends itself nor causes harm or destruction.

And that’s the flower poems finished with! (phew!) Each of them explore the nature of love in different ways and illustrate the mental state of fallen humankind. There’s another poem that can accompany this collection called “The Garden of Love”, but I will be analysing that in its own section. For now, focus on revising this collection, and I will be discussing similarities and direct contrasts later.