The poem The Sick Rose looks into vulnerability of women in the face of men, the susceptibility of love in the face of unfaithfulness, and the susceptibility of the body in the hands of STDs. It reflects Blake’s days in a London full of prostitution and where marriage was the socially acceptable surface that covered a mass of less socially-acceptable evils.
The poem, Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking provides a true account of the author’s life experiences. Whitman turns to look for answers about suffering and death in the life of human beings in the ordinary world. The poem focuses on grown up poet recollecting and comprehending the youthful days, and the way the childhood prepared him for future expressive life (Perrine 77).
In The Cradle Endlessly Rocking, Whitman emphasizes on the beauty of death and the mourning of lost love. Therefore, the major sources of concerns in this poem are love, struggle and death. On the other hand, Blake’s poem, The Sick Love highlights the theme of love, life, death and decay.
Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking is about a boy recognizing the work of nature on the human soul. Connotatively, the poem describes the rebirth and the death of the poet self. The sick rose literally is about a rose suffering from sickness due to an invisible worm. Connotatively, the poem is about sick love oblivious of its ailing state.
Whitman preference for trochaic movement instead of iambic movement shows the difference in quality of the use of meter. This is due to prowess on dramatic expression, and oratorical style. Therefore, the trochee is better for eloquent expression than the iambic meter (Perrine 40).
In the poem of The Sick Rose, there are two quatrains rhyming ABCB. The rhymes ‘worm’/‘storm’ and ‘joy’/‘destroy’ highlight the sense of premonition. In Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking the he-bird is a metaphor. He loses his companion, the she-bird to death. This signifies the boy-poet who must learn about love and death in order to mature. The he-bird’s sad music to his beloved sends a sad message of a love lost the boy has to live with during his lifetime. In the Poem, The Sick Rose, the rose symbolizes woman. The worm represents the penis and the STD becomes the sickness, virginity lose or pregnancy.
The rose in the poem The sick rose is a conventional symbol of love, feminine beauty, and innocence. The worm symbolizes a phallus, death and decay. Crimson joy of the rose connotes both sexual pleasure and shame.
In the poem Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking, the moon is a conspicuous reflection of the love of the birds. Birds are symbols of communicating love. The sea symbolizes the spiritual world. Therefore, making it visible to the boy that death makes physical love mystical. The title itself, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking suggests birth (Out Of The Cradle), and the continuing cycle (endlessly rocking).
Alliteration In the poem, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking occurs in the line that reads “and thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea.” Creation of the s’s effect makes the poem sound musical. Other groupings include sterile sands,’ ‘briers and blackberries, ‘ ‘Listened long and long,’ ‘sweetest song and songs,’ and ‘singer solitary’ occur throughout the poem.
The poet gives the two birds in the poem, Out Of Cradle Endlessly Rocking human attributes in that they have a harmonious union that breaks when the she-bird disappears one day never to return. The poet treats this story of love as dramatic and personal experience.
In the poem, The Sick Rose, the Rose owns human characteristic that of sickness. Howling is a personification of the storm.
In the poem, The Sick Rose, the night is metonymic representing the darkness that shows that love takes place in secret. Howling is a metonymy that represents grief and unhappiness. The use of word Howl emphasizes sorrow in the poem as a howl is stronger than cry. Bed is a metonymy representing a place of rest especially where people retire after they feel fatigued of their daily activities. We can conclude that love gets impatient (Perrine 23).
In the poem, Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking, the sea is a metonymy of rebirth and principle of maternity. The author uses the sea, the birds, the lilacs, the Calamus plant, and the sky to discuss poet’s life, uniqueness and disposition. Secondly, it eulogizes democracy and the American nation with its successes and ability. Thirdly, he yearned to give poetical expression, enduring mysteries, birth, death, rebirth or resurrection, and reincarnation (Perrine 25).
Whitman takes his inspiration from nature. Nature offers him answers to his questions of main concepts. He takes nature as tabula rasa, onto which the poet can estimate himself. He rules and inscribes it. In the poem, The Sick Rose Blake shows how shame and secrecy have corrupted the quality of love concepts that culture strongly attaches to love.
Works Cited
Perrine, Laurence. Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Peotry, 5th Edition. London: Macmillan Publishers, 1992. Print.