The Sick Rose
O rose, thou art sick!The invisible worm,That flies in the night,In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bedOf crimson joy,And his dark secret loveDoes thy life destroy.
About this text
The Sick Rose is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook #574; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Blake, The Sick Rose, in Poems of William Blake (1783–1794), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #574, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/blake-poems/the-sick-rose.html, id L02008.
Form and metre
The Sick Rose is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.0 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 2 -A-A bed · joyA · love · destroyA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O rose, thou art sick! | 5 | ····· |
| The invisible worm, | 5 | ·˘/˘· |
| That flies in the night, | 5 | ····· |
| In the howling storm, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Has found out thy bed | 5 | ····· |
| Of crimson joy, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| And his dark secret love | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Does thy life destroy. | 5 | ···˘/ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.