The Sick Rose

The setting of this poem was during the night. Blake uses open lines frequently to keep the poem flowing from line to the next. The persona had a depressed and almost mysterious tone. The poem is written in two quatrains. Blake uses assonance in the last words of the second and last lines of each quatrain. To me, the poem was an allegory. I thought the rose was symbolic of a woman, the invisible worm was the man who was cheating on her, and his dark secret love was the mistress. By taking this view of the poem, the theme would be that having an affair easily destroys a person's life.