Dara - Poetry analysis + quotes

Sick Rose ‘Invisible worm’

- Covert, unseen + mysterious

- Link to Adam + Eve (apple/rose, serpent/worm)

- Can cause sickness in humans (feed on flowers + flesh)

- Grotesque imagery

- Metaphor

- Phallic object

- Corruption (of innocene or political or nature) = link to enclosure act

- Desire, guilt, sin, danger

Sick Rose ‘O Rose thou art sick’

- Assonance

- Woeful sound, lamenting

- Mournful tone

- ‘Rose’ = capitalised - humanisation - symbolic of love + beauty

- Exclamation

- ‘Sick’ = plosive, consonance + end stopped (finality)

- Exploitation

- Sickness in society - distrust of church + monarchy

- Adjective of suffering - worm infiltrated + corrupted rose

Sick Rose ‘That flies in the night/In the howling storm’

‘Flies’

- Speed + stealth

‘Night’

- Symbolic of secrecy

- Provids cover + links to evil

- A time where sexual activity + sin occurs

‘Howling’

- Predatory, wild + animalistic

- Or uncontrollable pain

- Or dealing with psychological issues - modern society

- Destruction of innocent society

Sick Rose ‘bed/ Of crimson joy’

‘Bed’

- Place of vulnerability + comfort

- Sexual connotations

- Symbol of death

‘Crimson’

- Connotes sexuality or blood

- When virginity is lost

- Broken hymen + loss of innocence

‘Joy’

- Juxtaposes blood

- Sexual assault = joy for one

Sick rose ‘his dark secret’

- Masculine pronoun

- Semantic field of secrecy

- Suggests sin + guilt

- Context = his darkness killed rose - plants depend on light for survival (at time = women dependent on men)

London ‘charter’d street/charter’d Thames’

- Charter’d = owned

- Repitition

- River often seen as free = owned

- Metaphor for corruption of London

- No one had freedom

- Unity between natural + industrial manmade 'streets

- Thames = synecdochical of all forms of nature

- How man now owns nature

- Critical of neoclassism

- Mankind should be free to manipulate nature

London ‘Marks of weakness, marks of woe’

- Biblical allusion

- Mark of Cain

- Marked by God as punishment

- No one can kill him, he must endure suffering

- Eternal suffering

- Repetition

- Emphasise physical marks of contamination from poverty

- Alliteration ‘w’

- Emphasises feeling of severity + widespread effect on people

- Break in meter

- Depiction of fragility

- Shorter line = lessened = weak

- Break in meter (7 syllabls)

- Fragility + Suffering

London ‘The mind-forg’d manacles I hear’

- Mind forged = created internally in a person’s chains placed on someone by an authority

- Tension between internal and external forces that take away liberty

- Mental restriction

- Enforced by totalitarian system

London ‘Blackning church appals’

- Break in meter

- Oxymoron

- Highlights corruption + moral decay of church

- blackning = highlights devoid of light + goodness

- associated with death

- church oppresses people due to lack of action

- appal = disgusts

- the church hides the ‘chimney sweepers cry’

- Blake’s criticism of organised religion.

London ‘In every’

- Anaphora

- Sense of prevalence + ubiquity

- Suggests the negative befalls on everyone

London ‘Chimney sweeper cry’

- Chimney sweepers created due to industrialisation

- Children forced to climb chimneys, suffering from health issues

- Exploitation of child labor in London

- Reveals effects of industrialisation

- Cry = highlights innocence + age

- Auditory imagery

- Evokes images of distress

- Negative repetitive diction

- Allows Blake to express anger

London ‘hapless Soldiers sigh’

- Alludes to bloodshed of French Revolution

- Suggests potential for uprising in England if issues are ignored

- Implicates monarchy in children’s suffering

London ‘Runs in blood down Palace walls’

- Emphasises violence + injustice linked to power

- Shorter rhythm stresses severity

- Acrostic message ‘HEAR’

- Implores reader to hear the suffering

London ‘And blightes with plagues the Marriage hearse’

- Connects marriage (life) with death + decay

- Slightly shorter line underlines disturbing contrast

- Connotes disease, overpopulation + contagiousness

- Birth, marriage + death = inescapability of death

Holy Thursday (SOE) ‘Rich and fruitful land’ and ‘misery’ and ‘usurous’

- Reminder of the wealth of the country despite the poverty elsewhere

- Usurous = lending someone money with high interest

- Children work hard in return for nothing

Holy Thursday (SOE) ‘sun does never shine’ and ‘Rain does fall’

- Highlights life doesn’t resurface

- No happiness or warmth for children

- Sibilance emphasises harsh treatment of children

- Weather semantic field highlights lack of nature children exposed to

- Rain does fall = invites explicit contrast with absence of sun

- Difference between others lives and the childrens

- Image of barren landscape

- Distorts ideas of pleasant pastoral that Romantics revered

- Nothing can grow without light

- Children cannot grow without prosper

- Anaphora + repition ‘and their’

- Children are grouped together, no identity

- Although they are a big group they have no power

- Blake had 6 siblings, his closest sister died

- Feels sympathy for children, wants them to live longer than his sister

Holy Thursday (SOE) ‘Rich and fruitful land’ vs ‘misery’ and ‘usurous’

- Highlight idea of suffering

- Remind reader of the poverty compared to wealthy

- ‘Babes’ reinforces child fragility

- Highlights their innocence

The Tyger ‘Did he who make the lamb make thee?’

- Lamb = symbol of innocence + purity

- Christianity - symbol of Jesus (lamb of God)

- Represents Lord’s sacrificial death + his role as saviour

- Image of innocence contrasts infernal imagery of Tyger

The Tyger ‘burning bright’ ‘burnt the fire’

- Highlights vitality + intensity of tyger = more than an animal, an embodiment of danger

- Fire + light motif

- Symbolises tyger’s passion

The tyger ‘hammer’ ‘chain’ ‘furnace’ ‘anvil’

- Semantic field - blacksmith

- Metaphorical

- Mirrors God being painted as a blacksmith

- Uses tools + powers to create beautiful, fearsome animal

The tyger ‘stars threw down their spears’

- Imagery

- Symbolises defeat of evil in presence of tyger

- Allusion to casting down of angels after Satan rebelled against God (Paradise lost)

The Tyger ‘Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ - ‘Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?’

- Fricative (frame… fearful)

- Paradox (beauty of tyger + fear of nature)

- Change from ‘could’ to ‘dare’

- Signifies realisation of the creator’s audacity to create a fearsome creature

- Linked to freewill that leads us astray

- God gave us freewill

Early Spring ‘To her fair works did Nature link the human soul that through me ran;’

- Personification of nature

- Nature has ability to create (connects nature + God - pantheism)

- Suggests man is nature’s creation

- Feminises nature

- Connotations to Mother nature (maternal + caring)

- Capitalised as though divine

Early spring ‘‘tis my faith that every flower enjoys the air it breathes’

- Nature appreciate simple pleasures

- Unlike humans (‘sad thoughts’)

- Visual imagery of nature

- ‘Breathe air’ = luxury during Industrial revolution

- Alliteraton (f)

- Personifies periwinkle (as though capable of taking action itself)

- Enjambent + flow of stanza = represents garden (unified without borders or restrictions)

- Contrasts simlicity of nature + complexities of humans