Literary Analysis Applied Linguistics

The Sick Rose by William Blake:
Summary and Analysis

The Sick Rose was first published in William Blake's poetry collections Songs
of Experience in 1794. This poem is one of the inexplicable poems in English
literature because of its precise meaning which is difficult to draw a fix
meaning. There are many possibilities of different interpretations of the
analysis of The Sick Rose.
聽
William Blake (1757-1827)
The speaker of the poem addresses the Rose and informs her that she is sick.
The cause of her sickness is a worm that is invisible and it howls in the storm
at night. The invisible worm infects her with his dark secret love and destroys
her life.
William Blake has consciously used the language of personification. In the

poem, human qualities have been attributed to both 'rose' and 'worm'. Here,
rose is made sick. Similarly, the worm has the power to 'make love', 'find out
bed', and 'enjoy crimson'. Language of personification works with a great deal
to provide symbolic identity to the function and the implication of the words of
the poem. In this short and beautiful poem, Blake uses symbols connecting
the sensuous with the emotional and the moral meaning. As a visionary poet,
he uses symbols in an elusive way. Apparently, the poem is about a rose and a
worm, but it is obvious that there is a hidden meaning in the poem. The things
and the situation described in the poem are all symbolic. They imply
something more than what they are. Blake uses contrast as a poetic device to
convey his meaning. Thus, rose and worm, joy and destroy are paired off.
Both good and virtues are indicated by the number of words in the poem. Evil
is indicated by a number of words: sick, worm, night, howling storm, dark,
secret, destroy. The worm stands for evil. It also connotes the ideas of lust,
sin, destruction, corruption, and death. The worm is a mystery as it is
described as "invisible". It is engaged in secret activities: finding the bed,
expressing dark and secret love. The rose stands for purity, innocence,
beauty, ignorance, and so on. The innocent rose is ruined by an experienced
worm. The rose is a thing of beauty, which is ruined by jealousy, and sexual
passion of the worm. The rose is a symbol of love, which is destroyed by
selfishness. A crimson rose has been entered, sickened, and destroyed by a
worm. This destruction may symbolize the destruction caused by secrecy,
deceit, hypocrisy, and pain. In The Sick Rose, the secrecy of love becomes a
disease. The crimson joy' suggests rose's complicity both in passion and in
secrecy. So the poet has compared sick love with sick rose. The love of a
demon (worm) is nothing meaningful and hopeful rather it is mystic and
tragic, painful and destructive.
If the poem is looked through feminist perspective, the worm can be

patriarchy. Patriarchy is all-powerful and capable to destroy woman race. The
worm symbolically presents Biblical serpent and it is the symbol of corruption,
moral degradation and it is something that is a destroyer and an exploiter.
The male worm and female rose have a Freudian significance. The worm is
invisible, a hidden and repulsive thing. Scientifically speaking, there is no
worm, which flies in the night and in howling storm. It is an earthbound insect.
The image worm suggests phallus. It visits rose secretly. "Howling storm"
symbolizes a chaotic and beastly emotional crisis going on about him while he
takes his dark flight. The words night, invisible worm, howling storm, dark and
secret love, and destroy connote sexual intercourse between a rose and a
worm. In psychoanalytic criticism, the worm stands for phallic image. It stands
for the male sexual organ. A woman feels herself inferior and insecure due to
that sexual organ. A rose is attacked on a stormy night by a destructive worm.
Its images carry a weight of secondary associations. We may say that it refers
to the destruction of love by selfishness, of innocence by experience, of
spiritual life by spiritual death.
The poem has been presented as the love that is destructive like a worm. The
tragic tone of the love is the central part of the poem. The speaker of the
poem is telling the destructive love by comparing the mystic and tragic love
affair of the couple. One is compared with sick rose and another is compared
with the destructive worm, which visits at the night time.
The poem is short and sweet having the figurative voice. The poet has
attributed the high quality of the human world as male and female. So this
poem is the poem of high sound of the human world with destructed life.
https://www.bachelorandmaster.com/.../the-sick-rose-summary-analysis.html
A Short Analysis of William
Blake’s ‘The Sick Rose’
OCT 20
Posted by interestingliterature
A critical reading of a classic short poem
‘The Sick Rose’ was published in William Blake’s Songs of Experience in 1794.
The poem remains a baffling one, with Blake’s precise meaning difficult to
ascertain. Many different interpretations have been offered, so below we
sketch out some of the possible ways of analysing ‘The Sick Rose’ in terms of
its imagery.
The Sick Rose
O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
How we interpret the meaning of ‘The Sick Rose’ depends largely on how we
choose to analyse the poem’s two central images: the rose and the worm. It is
possible to see the worm as a symbol of death, given that worms are
associated with decay and are commonly said to feed upon the dead (we are
‘food for worms’ in our graves). By contrast, roses are often associated with
love, beauty, and the erotic. In Blake’s poem we get several hints that such a
reading is tenable: the rose is in a ‘bed’, suggesting not just its flowerbed but
also the marriage bed (or even, perhaps, the

bed of unmarried lovers); not only this, but it is a bed of ‘crimson joy’, which is
not quite as strong a suggestion of sex and eroticism as ‘scarlet joy’ would
have been, but nevertheless bristles with more than simple colour-description.
(The rose may literally be crimson, but this bright, deep red suggests
lifeblood, beating hearts, and perhaps carnal appetites as well.)
Why is the worm flying in Blake’s poem? This is also puzzling, and disturbs us.
Worms wriggle and crawl: they aren’t known for flying. Clearly this is a
symbolic worm, denoting some sort of corruption at a more metaphorical
level. The fact that the worm is a creature of the night suggests that it is like a
demon or other night-visitor which feeds upon people as they sleep (back to
that ‘bed’ again), like a succubus or incubus sexually ‘feeding’ upon sleeping
victims. This would tally with the fact that the worm harbours a ‘dark secret
love’ for the rose: is the worm guilty of jealous love for the rose, whose beauty
and ‘joy’ it envies? Is this a version of Nietzschean ressentiment, or Oscar
Wilde’s statement that ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’? Or perhaps the
sort of thing we encounter in another William Blake poem, ‘A Poison Tree’?
This might explain the ‘howling storm’ in which the worm ‘flies’: the turbulent
emotions and turmoil generated by resenting and hating that which one loves,
conflicted desire and disgust.
The poem might be read, slightly differently, as a take on Christian doctrine:

‘worm’ can also be a poetic word for ‘snake’ or ‘serpent’, and this conjures up
the Garden of Eden (that bed of roses again?). The Satanic serpent which
persuaded Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge is motivated by a
desire for revenge against God, and the pure earthly paradise God has
established with Adam and Eve.
‘The Sick Rose’, although written in clear, plain language, is an enigmatic

poem whose meaning remains difficult to pin down. Therein lies much of its
haunting power.
Continue to explore the world of Blake’s poetry with our analysis of ‘The
Lamb’, our overview of his poem known as ‘Jerusalem’, and his scathing
indictment of poverty and misery in London. If you’re looking for a good
edition of Blake’s work, we recommend Selected Poetry (Oxford World’s
Classics) .
Image: William Blake’s illustration for ‘The Sick Rose’, 1826;

via Wikimedia Commons.
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https://interestingliterature.com/2016/10/20/a-short-analysis-of-william-blakes-the-sick-rose/
ANALYSIS: SPEAKER
"The Sick Rose" is a very weird poem, which makes us think that the speaker
is a little weird too. There are lots of ways you could picture the speaker, but
here's our take: he's kind of like a bizarre next door-neighbor. Sometimes he
sings little songs about the plants in his garden; you've caught him doing this
a bunch of times, and it always reminds you of a Disney movie.
One day you are watching him over your wall as he's picking some roses to
put on his kitchen table. You notice that one of the roses is a little brown and
you hear your neighbor exclaim, "O rose, thou art sick." That sounds normal
enough, but then he starts going on about a magical worm that "flies in the
night." OK, that's a little strange, but nothing you haven't heard from him
before. But then your neighbor's song gets strangely sexual, and he starts
talking about how the worm destroys the rose with his "dark secret love." As
you stare in astonishment, your friendly neighbor turns around and says hello;
he doesn't even look embarrassed that you've overheard one of the strangest
things in recent memory. He says to you, "I can't get rid of these worms in my
garden because they're too small to see."
OK that explains the "invisible part," but you're still wondering about that
violent sexual encounter he describes. Then, as if he can read your mind, he
says, "I really, really, really like my roses; when a worm eats them, I can't help
thinking that the worm is destroying them. I really like poetry too, so naturally I
like to write poems about it. It helps me deal with a situation that makes me
sad."
When he finishes, he tells you to hold on as he quickly runs into the house.
When he comes back, he has a huge stack of papers in his hands. He tells you
that the book is a collection of illustrated poems he's been working on for
children and asks if you would like to take a look. You decline, telling him you'll
wait until you can get a copy on Amazon, but you think to yourself, "There's no
way my kids are reading these poems."
https://www.shmoop.com/sick-rose/speaker.html
ANALYSIS: FORM AND METER

Anapestic Dimeter with substitutions
"The Sick Rose" uses a strange meter called anapestic dimeter, meaning that,
theoretically, each line should have two ("di") anapests. An anapest is a three
syllable foot that has two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable,
as in line 7:
And his dark sec-ret love.
As it turns out, though, this is the only pure anapestic dimeter line in the whole
poem. Many of the lines have what is called a substitution, where instead of
one of the anapests we have something else, like an iamb (an unstressed
syllable followed by a stressed syllable) or a spondee (two stressed syllables).
Take the first line for example:
O rose thou art sick.
You'll notice that the first foot has two stressed syllables (spondee), followed
by our expected anapest. Line 2 does the same thing, only the first foot is
occupied by an iamb rather than a spondee ("The in-" counts as one syllable
and is pronounced together like "Thin-"): "The in-vis-i-ble worm." Line 3 follows
the same pattern as line 2 ("That flies in the night"). Line 4 also makes use of
a substitution, but this time it's in the second half of the line: "In the howl-
ing storm." The line starts with an anapest (two unstressed syllables followed
by a stressed syllable) and ends with an iamb. Lines 5 and 8 do the same
thing; they begin with an anapest and end with an iamb. Line 6 is the odd-ball
here; it's just iambic dimeter ("Of crim-son joy).
Now, you might be saying to yourself, why should we even call this poem
something fancy like anapestic dimeter when Blake makes all kinds of
substitutions (remember only line 7 is purely anapestic dimeter)? It's a good
question to ask, and the answer is that substitutions are perfectly acceptable
in metrics; it makes sense to call it anapestic dimeter not only because that's
a really cool name but also because it's the only way we can explain the fact
that most of the lines have five syllables. Otherwise we would just describe
the poem as "five syllable lines with no metrical pattern." That's boring, and
doesn't do justice to the sophisticated metrical work going on here.
https://www.shmoop.com/sick-rose/rhyme-form-meter.html
THE SICK ROSE INTRODUCTION

In A Nutshell
In 1789, the eccentric poet-printer William Blake published a small book of
poems called Songs of Innocence. The poems are exactly that: short lyrics
about children (innocence) that resemble songs and nursery rhymes. But
Blake was no ordinary poet; he was also a painter, printer, and engraver, and
each of the poems in the Songs of Innocence was accompanied by an
illustration that framed the poem. Head over to "Best of the Web" to see what
these poems looked like.
If Blake wasn't content with just writing poems with no illustrations, he also
wasn't content with simply writing about innocence; something was missing.
In 1794 he published a companion to the Songs of Innocencecalled the Songs
of Experience, which contains "The Sick Rose." The Songs of Experience were
never published without their counterpart, and the entire volume was called
the Songs of Innocence and Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of
the Human Soul. The title couldn't be more descriptive. In general, the Songs
of Innocence tend to be, well, more innocent, benign, and childish, whereas
the Songs of Experience explore darker, more sinister themes associated with
the Industrial Revolution, religion, and education. "The Sick Rose," for example,
isn't just about a rose that's losing its color. It's about a worm (sometimes
read as a symbol of the devil) that (essentially) rapes the rose and destroys it
with its "dark secret love."
Although Blake thought of innocence and experience as contraries, any

attempts to classify innocence as good and experience as bad inevitably fail;
sometimes the Songs of Innocence appear innocent and then end up being
darker and more complicated upon closer examination. In fact, Blake
sometimes moved poems back and forth between the two volumes, a fact
which suggests that his vision was much more complicated than the simple
word "contraries" implies.
WHY SHOULD I CARE?

You know the old expression, "don't judge a book by its cover," and its variants,
like "looks can be deceiving," right? Well, this might be one of the best ways to
characterize the Songs of Innocence and Experience in general, and the "The
Sick Rose" in particular. You see, the poem isn't just about a sick rose and a
flying worm, it's also about violence and sex, issues that we routinely
encounter in movies, television shows, and video games. This is not to
suggest that "The Sick Rose" is the eighteenth century equivalent of Resident
Evil, only that it too is just as interested in the darker side of human nature,
society, and culture as anything today, despite the fact that it is literally about
a rose and a worm.
We can't help thinking "The Sick Rose" is just a bit like Nip/Tuck, a provocative
show on FX about plastic surgeons. The show is known for its gratuitous sex
scenes and attempts to expand the boundaries of acceptability. While Blake's
poem isn't about a super hot plastic surgeon that takes home a different
woman every other night, it is interested in making sex and love more public,
albeit in its own way. The worm destroys the rose with his "dark secret love."
We don't usually think of love as something that destroys things, but the poem
suggests that a repressed love that is "dark" and "secret" – as opposed to
"light" (whatever that would be) and public – does. So while this poem doesn't
go over the top with risqué nude scenes, it does at least suggest the
dangerous consequences of viewing sex and love as things to be kept "dark"
and "secret."
THE SICK ROSE SUMMARY

The poem describes a sick rose and a worm that manages to locate the rose's
"bed of crimson joy." The worm destroys the rose with his "dark secret love," a
not so subtle reference to some kind of destructive sexuality.
LINES 1-4 SUMMARY

Get out the microscope, because we’re going
through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1
O rose thou art sick
 The poem opens with the speaker addressing the rose.
 The speaker tells the rose that it is sick.
Lines 2-4
The invisible worm,
In the howling storm
 The speaker describes an "invisible worm" that flies.
 The worm can also fly when it's raining.
 We don't know what this worm is doing in the poem or even what kind
of worm it is. An invisible worm that can fly? Is it some kind of butterfly
Lines 5-6
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
 The speaker tells us more about the worm; it has found the rose's bed.
 The status of this "bed" is ambiguous. It could be just a place where the
rose sleeps that happens to be "crimson."
 It could also be a "bed" of something, like a "bed of roses" (not unlikely
since the poem is called "The Sick Rose") or something else that's red.
This would make the rose a gardener of some kind.
Lines 7-8
 The speaker tells us that the worm's "love" kills the rose.
 It's strange that "love" is killing something here, since we usually
associate love with life.
 "Dark secret love" could mean three things. It could mean the worm's
love, as in "My love for you will never die."
 It could also refer to something that the worm loves, as in, "Hello, my
love, I'm home."
 It might even refer to the act of making love, or sex.
NATURE
Symbol Analysis
The poem is called "The Sick Rose" so it's no surprise that nature figures
prominently into it. But this poem isn't just about a dying flower. It's about a
weird, almost magical worm—it can fly after all—that destroys the flower. Sure
we all know about the circle of life and how bugs eat plants etc., but there's
something more sinister about that story in this poem.
 Line 1: The speaker addresses the rose and says that it is sick. The
form of address—"O rose"—is called an apostrophe.
 Line 2: The speaker introduces the "invisible worm." The worm probably
isn't literally invisible, but might be in some kind of stealth mode. It
might blend in with the surroundings like a chameleon, or it could just
be too small to be seen. "Invisible" might be a metaphor for the worm's
quiet act of destruction.
 Line 4: The speaker mentions a "howling storm," which gives the poem
a more ominous tone. "Howling" reminds us of dogs or wolves; the
sounds of those animals are here a metaphor for the storm.
 Line 5: "Bed" might refer to a plot of ground in which the rose is
growing, or even the rose's petals. In the first case, it's not a literal bed
with comforters and pillows, so it's a metaphor for the plot of ground.
In the second case, it refers to a place where insects rest or sleep.
 Lines 7-8: The speaker describes how the worm "destroys" (8) the rose
with his "dark secret love." The worm might literally destroy the rose,
but he most certainly doesn't have any "dark secret love"; attributing
human characteristics ("love") to inhuman things (the worm) is
called personification.
THE COLOR RED

Symbol Analysis
The poem is called "The Sick Rose," and we often associate the color red with
roses, as in the well-known rhyme "roses are red, violets are blue." In addition
to the rose described in the first line, the speaker also refers to a "bed of
crimson joy" in line 6. The color is associated with sickness because the rose
is sick, but it is also associated with happiness or "joy." The poem suggests, if
only obliquely, that "red" can symbolize different, even opposing, things.
 Line 1: The speaker addresses the rose, which we assume is red. The
way in which the speaker addresses the rose—"O rose"—is called
an apostrophe.
 Line 6: The rose has a "bed of crimson joy." "Bed" could refer to the
garden plot in which the rose resides or even to its petals, which might
function as a bed for various insects. If it refers to the ground, it could
be literally red or it could just mean an intense kind of joy associated
with the bed. Describing a feeling (joy) in terms of a color is an
example of synesthesia, a type of figurative language in which different
sensory experiences are mixed, as in "hot pink
SICKNESS
Symbol Analysis
We know from the get-go that this poem is about a "sick rose." But why is the
rose sick? The poem is concerned with this question, and refuses to give an
answer. It starts by telling us the rose is sick, and the second stanza suggests
that the worm might be the cause of this sickness. The speaker never really
tells us what exactly is happening so we are left wondering whether or not the
worm maliciously infects the rose.
 Line 1: The speaker tells the rose that it is sick. The form of address
—"O rose"—is called an apostrophe.
 Lines 7-8: The speaker describes how the worm destroys the rose with
his "dark secret love." The way in which the worm penetrates the "bed
of crimson joy" suggests that he is infecting the rose.
SEX AND LOVE

Symbol Analysis
We've all heard the expression "sex and love aren't the same thing." In this
poem, though, they sort of are the same thing. The love in this poem is "dark
and secret" (7) and is associated with a destructive or violent act of sexual
intercourse, bordering on but not quite synonymous with rape. The poem
refuses to give us an image or symbol of love that isn't complicated by
something more sinister. The rose, an almost universal symbol of love, is sick,
and the worm's "love" is as far from a Valentine's Day card as one could get.
 Line 1: The speaker addresses the rose with phrase "O rose thou art
sick"; this is called an apostrophe. The rose here could be
a metaphor for love or passion; our ideas about which are "sick."
 Lines 5-6: The worm manages to worm his way into the rose's bed,
which suggests some kind of sexual act.
 Lines 7-8: The worm's "dark secret love" kills the rose; a worm doesn't
literally possess any "love," so this is an example of personification,
where human characteristics or emotions (love) are attributed to non-
human things (worm).
ANALYSIS: SPEAKER
The Sick Rose" is a very weird poem, which makes us think that the speaker is
a little weird too. There are lots of ways you could picture the speaker, but
here's our take: he's kind of like a bizarre next door-neighbor. Sometimes he
sings little songs about the plants in his garden; you've caught him doing this
a bunch of times, and it always reminds you of a Disney movie.
One day you are watching him over your wall as he's picking some roses to
put on his kitchen table. You notice that one of the roses is a little brown and
you hear your neighbor exclaim, "O rose, thou art sick." That sounds normal
enough, but then he starts going on about a magical worm that "flies in the
night." OK, that's a little strange, but nothing you haven't heard from him
before. But then your neighbor's song gets strangely sexual, and he starts
talking about how the worm destroys the rose with his "dark secret love." As
you stare in astonishment, your friendly neighbor turns around and says hello;
he doesn't even look embarrassed that you've overheard one of the strangest
things in recent memory. He says to you, "I can't get rid of these worms in my
garden because they're too small to see."
OK that explains the "invisible part," but you're still wondering about that
violent sexual encounter he describes. Then, as if he can read your mind, he
says, "I really, really, really like my roses; when a worm eats them, I can't help
thinking that the worm is destroying them. I really like poetry too, so naturally I
like to write poems about it. It helps me deal with a situation that makes me
sad."
When he finishes, he tells you to hold on as he quickly runs into the house.
When he comes back, he has a huge stack of papers in his hands. He tells you
that the book is a collection of illustrated poems he's been working on for
children and asks if you would like to take a look. You decline, telling him you'll
wait until you can get a copy on Amazon, but you think to yourself, "There's no
way my kids are reading these poems."
ANALYSIS: SETTING
Where It All Goes Down
X
Imagine you're working on your hands and knees in your garden one day.
You've already tidied up your vegetable patch and you've just moved on to the
flower bed when you notice that one of your roses is brown. You know you
didn't plant any brown roses—is there such a thing?—so something must be
wrong. "O rose thou art sick," you exclaim. "Thou art sick?" Must be all that
poetry you've been reading that's making you talk like that!
After half an hour you can't seem to find out what's wrong. And then you
notice it: a tiny worm, almost invisible, right there in the middle of the rose.
You exclaim to yourself, "wow, that little thing did all this damage?" You keep
thinking it over and before you know it you're making up a little poem: "The
invisible worm / That flies in the night…Has found out thy bed / Of crimson
joy: / And with his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy." You can't believe
those words came out of your mouth, as you never fancied yourself a poet.
Who would've thought?
ANALYSIS: SOUND CHECK
Twisted Nursery Rhyme
You know how sometimes in cartoons a little devil and a little angel will
appear on a character's shoulder and give him contrary opinions about what
to do? Well, if William Blake were trying to write some poems and if Mother
Goose appeared dressed both as an angel and as a devil, the angel Mother
Goose would tell him to write a pretty, neat little poem that has a nice, happy
story in it with plenty of good rhymes. The evil Mother Goose, on the other
hand, would dictate "The Sick Rose." Her poem would be about a worm
destroying a rose and wouldn't rhyme as well as the angelic Mother Goose's
poem would.
Take the first stanza as an example:
O rose thou art sick,

The invisible worm
In the howling storm.
The only two words that look like they should rhyme are "worm" and "storm,"
but they don't really rhyme, they only look like they do. That devil Mother
Goose sure is sneaky. The second stanza is similar:
Has found out thy

Bed of crimson joy.
Now at least in this stanza our evil Mother Goose has learned how to rhyme
("joy" and "destroy") but true to form she makes it a naughty rhyme; "joy" and
"destroy" rhyme because that's precisely what the bad Mother Goose wants to
do: destroy the joy of nursery rhymes, or at the least the joys that her
counterpart, the good Mother Goose, always writes about. And she does a
pretty good job of it; her poem manages to find a way to talk about sex,
violence, and death.
ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH THE

TITLE?
The title of the poem refers to the sick rose in the poem that falls victim to the
worm's "dark secret love" (7). The poem is called "The Sick Rose," but we don't
learn a whole lot about the rose's sickness; we're tempted to think that
sickness is a metaphor for something else, perhaps for a certain view of love
that the poem argues is destructive. If the rose is a symbol of love or passion,
and the rose is sick, then perhaps our ideas about love and passion are sick
as well. We think of love, which is pretty much synonymous with sex in this
poem, as something to be kept "dark" and "secret." Well, it turns out that that
idea of love can have destructive consequences: it destroys the rose.
The title of the poem refers to the sick rose in the poem that falls victim to the
worm's "dark secret love" (7). The poem is called "The Sick Rose," but we don't
learn a whole lot about the rose's sickness; we're tempted to think that
sickness is a metaphor for something else, perhaps for a certain view of love
that the poem argues is destructive. If the rose is a symbol of love or passion,
and the rose is sick, then perhaps our ideas about love and passion are sick
as well. We think of love, which is pretty much synonymous with sex in this
poem, as something to be kept "dark" and "secret." Well, it turns out that that
idea of love can have destructive consequences: it destroys the rose.
The Sick Rose

聽聽聽
by William Blake
ANALYSIS: CALLING CARD

Deceptive Simplicity
Let's face it, when you first read "The Sick Rose," your immediate reaction was
probably something like, "this poem is really simple: it's about a rose that gets
sick and a weird worm." There's nothing wrong with feeling a little frustration at
the fact that such a simple poem has achieved practically canonical status. But
like many of Blake's short lyrics from the 聽 Songs of Innocence and Experience,
appearances can be deceiving. First of all, many of the words in the poem are
ambiguous. For example, what does "bed of crimson joy" refer to? The flower-
bed, the rose's petals? What exactly makes love "dark" and secret"? And why is
the rose sick anyway?
These ambiguities and questions are an important part of the poem's fabric, and
they get to the heart of the issues that it wants to explore. For example, "The Sick
Rose" is very much concerned with the potentially destructive consequences of
"dark secret love." Sure it's also about a worm and a rose, but those figures serve
largely as the occasion for Blake's more sophisticated musings about our ideas
of love and sexuality. Indeed, if the rose is a symbol of love or passion, and it is
sick, then perhaps the poem is quietly telling us that our ideas about love and
passion are "sick," diseased, infected. Such a complex suggestion is born out in
the poem: although it seems warm and rosy (did we just say that?), upon closer
examination we realize that the worm discovers the rose's "bed," a place we
naturally associate with sex, and then destroys it with its "dark secret love."
Sylvia Plath: Poems Summary and Analysis of

"Metaphors"
Summary
In this poem, the narrator is describing her pregnancy in metaphorical language, exploring an
ambivalence about it.
She first announces herself as a "riddle in nine syllables" (the poem is also nine lines long). She
then describes herself as an elephant, similar to a huge house. She is also like a watermelon,
walking along on two small legs, though she praises both the “red fruit” of her belly and the “fine
timbers” of her legs. She then compares herself to a loaf of bread, its yeast rising big and full, and
a coin purse stuffed with newly-minted money.
She views herself as simply a “means," a carrier for a child. She is merely a “stage,” a
hardworking “cow in calf.” She believes she looks as though she has eaten a large bag of green
apples. Ultimately, since there is nothing she can do about her pregnancy, she sees herself as
having boarded a train which she cannot leave.
Analysis
"Metaphors" is a very short poem from 1959. Plath announces that she is a riddle in nine syllables,
and then uses a multitude of seemingly unrelated metaphors to describe herself. However, it is
clear upon inspection that she is describing a state of pregnancy. The nine lines correspond to the
nine months of pregnancy, and each line possesses nine syllables. Plath was pregnant with her first
child, Frieda, at the time of the poem's composition. Though most critics concur that Plath's
healthiest relationships in life were with her two children, the poem suggests a deep ambivalence
about motherhood. The basic conflict is the poem is that of duty vs. individuality. The narrator
feels that by subsuming herself to the duty of motherhood, her own individuality is being stifled.
Though the poem uses consistent first person, the ironic effect is that the speaker's individuality is
only expressed in terms of the child she carries. She is aware of herself, but only in terms of what
she cannot be.
While some of the poem's images are rather humorous - she describes a pregnant woman as "a
melon strolling on two tendrils," for instance - the overall depiction of pregnancy is not very
heartening. The woman, whom readers should assume is Plath herself, is discouraged by her
physical appearance. She feels large and unwieldy, comparing herself to an elephant, a "cow in
calf," and a "ponderous house." She expresses no joy with her increasing size. Instead, she is too
well-aware of how she has lost control of her body. She lacks individuality, and is instead only a
"means" and a "stage" for another. Everything happening to her is for someone else, not for
herself.
The bleakness of this situation is crystallized in the last line of the poem – "Boarded the train
there's no getting off." Here, she suggests that she lacks any agency, and is instead at the mercy of
another. She implies that her feelings about the child mean nothing; she must carry the pregnancy
to term. She has no choice in the matter. Quite obviously, the stereotypical image of the glowing,
exuberant pregnant woman is not found in "Metaphors." The famed Plath scholar Stephen Gould
Axelrod agrees, writing that "Beneath the humor of Plath’s imagery, we discover very little real
pleasure...indeed, in the last two lines even the humor vanishes, displaced by anxious awareness of
remorseless fate."
Upon closer analysis, Plath's choice of imagery reinforces her belief that she is simply a carrier.
For instance, an elephant is valuable not for itself, but for its ivory. The timber of a house is
valuable only for what it contains - a family - and not in itself. A purse is insignificant; only the
money which it holds matters. Her evocation of green apples suggests both a sour, uncomfortable
treat, but also offers an implicit allusion to Eve, who ate an apple from the tree of knowledge and
thus cursed all women with the legacy of painful childbirth.
It is not surprising that Plath was so ambivalent about motherhood. As a young woman who had
high hopes for her academic and literary career, motherhood could, and did, place limitations on
her productivity. She had little time to work on her writing after Frieda and Nicholas were born,
while husband Ted Hughes could devote his time towards a professional literary career.
Resentment grew for her as she placed her husband, children, and housewifely duties before her
career. Women in the 1950s and 1960s often experienced this problem, clearly documented in
Betty Freidan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. Plath's struggle to harness her
creative powers amid the overwhelming solitude and monotony of motherhood manifested itself in
"Metaphors" even before she gave birth, and she would continue to explore this theme throughout
the rest of her life and work.
https://www.gradesaver.com/sylvia-plath-poems/study-
guide/summary-metaphors
Sylvia Plath and Metaphors

Metaphors was written in March 1959 when Sylvia Plath mistakenly believed she might be
pregnant.
In her journal of 20th March the original title was Metaphors for a Pregnant Woman but this
was shortened for publication, which came a year later.
So the poem kind of looks forward - Sylvia Plath anticipates through the use of metaphor what
she will be feeling like when she really is with child. And just to confirm, she did become
pregnant a few months later, with her first child to fellow poet Ted Hughes.
From a poetic angle Metaphors is fascinating. In nine lines, each with nine syllables, the poet
creates numerous images that bring to the reader's mind a variation on a theme of a swollen
mother-to-be.
The poem was included in a slim volume The Colossus, published in the UK by William
Heinemann in 1960.
Metaphors
I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
Analysis of Metaphors
Metaphors is a single stanza poem of nine lines. Each line has nine syllables in it, to coincide
with the nine months of gestation of a human pregnancy. For example:
I'm/ a/ rid/dle/ in/ nine/ syll/a/bles,
An/ el/e/phant/, a/ pond/er/ous/ house,
A/ mel/on stro/lling/ on/ two/ ten/drils.
This is the poet playing with language, building up a series of verbal pictures to reflect the
nine months of pregancy.
There is no set rhyme scheme but note the imperfect rhymes of certain lines
- syllables/tendrils/apples...house/purse...calf/off. The poem is free verse, with a metaphor or
more in each line. And look out for alliteration - two tendrils/money new-minted/cow in calf -
and some near internal rhyme and assonance such as riddle/syllables/melon strolling
on/eaten a bag of green apples.
Metaphors
The word metaphor means carrying across, something the umbilical chord does when the
embryo is growing in the womb. Sylvia Plath uses this most poetic of devices to explore her
future pregnant state.
In effect she is saying that she will be equal to a riddle, an elephant, a house, a melon, red
fruit, ivory, fine timbers, a yeasty loaf, a fat purse, a means(to an end), a stage, a cow, a bag
of green apples and a train.
Metaphors can be seen as a way into what is unknown, a vehicle for exploration. They are
also a magical device for creating imagery which can help the mind in its understanding of the
world. In this particular poem each metaphor becomes the poet's physical body, helping
release feelings of happiness, tension and fear.
Ambiguity in Metaphors
A riddle might be said to be ambiguous in itself. Plath's poem certainly can
take the reader one way, then the other. Is the speaker happy to be with child,
or unhappy? Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal - "I do not primarily want to be a
mother." But then, at a different date, writes - "A woman has 9 months of
becoming something other than herself, of separating from this otherness,of
feeding it and being a source of milk and honey to it.To be deprived of this is a
death indeed."
Line by Line Analysis of Metaphors

Line 1 I'm a riddle in nine syllables
First line, first metaphor. This person is a riddle, an enigma, something to be puzzled over and
worked out, the answer containing nine syllables only. Riddles often involve the ingenious use
of wordplay, imagery and lateral thinking, left brain versus right brain, before the definitive
conclusion is arrived at.
The speaker is giving the reader a hint - in this first line and every other line that follows - this
is a nine-fold riddle made up of metaphorical images.
Line 2 An elephant, a ponderous house
A fully pregnant woman might well feel that she is too heavy, having to carry all that extra
weight around. Elephants are generally slow to move, deliberate in their action and could be
described as bulky.
Here is the mother-to-be experiencing herself as a potential matriarch, having to make

decisions with the baby in mind, having to reduce movement, to take things at a slower pace.
The word ponderous reinforces the feeling of slowness, of dull plodding existence. The house
introduces the idea of safety, of domestic space, the cosy home.
Line 3 A melon strolling on two tendrils
This is a bizarre and comical image, conjuring up vivid pictures of a rounded, swollen
stomach casually strolling along on two thin leg-like appendages. Plant tendrils often grow in
spiral form, climbing up and clinging on; and the fruit carries the seed (like the ovary), so the
whole sentence is full of natural fertility so to speak.
Further Analysis
Line 4 O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
The first three lines are summed up in melodramatic fashion - the melon is a water melon
(echoes of waters breaking at the end of pregnancy), red just like blood; the ivory relates to
the elephant, being of high value and only available when the elephant has died; fine timbers
are what hold up the roof of well built houses, the strongest wood being oak.
The speaker is in near disbelief, as proven by the exclamation mark.
Line 5 This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
When the dough is kneaded and ready for prooving it's left to one side in a warm place to
rise. Often this means a doubling in size of the dough. Then of course the final baking takes
place in the oven. Colloquially (in the UK) having a 'bun in the oven' means that someone is
with child.
This metaphor is more traditional and wholesome and has no comical side-effect, unlike the
melon in line three.
Line 6 Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
The child is the new money, the mother's large stomach the purse, holding the precious
currency of life. Having a full purse means that there's sufficient wealth held so it's of great
value.
More Analysis
Line 7 I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
The last of four lines with end stop punctuation, suggesting a completeness. The speaker
refers to being a means, a means to an end; something done to produce a result. And that
result will be the birth of a child. Hopefully the mother will keep her inherent value and not feel
as if she were simply a carrier, a vessel - once the child is born the mother won't feel empty or
worthless.
A stage - a part in a process or a stage on which to perform? Probably the former. The
speaker is in the early stages of pregnancy, as the saying goes, and is therefore an integral
part of the process of growth.
Again, the speaker sees herself as an animal, a large one, a cow. Pregnant cows are
particularly heavy, with swollen stomach, udders and wide strange gait. This mother feels that
she is a cow in calf.
Line 8 I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Why green apples? Does that mean they're unripe, unlike red apples? So many apples would
cause stomach ache and severe discomfort. Did she eat them all at once? That would be
obscene.
Perhaps the green apples reflect the popular but misplaced idea that Eve gave Adam an
apple to eat in the Garden of Eden (although in Genesis apple isn't mentioned, only fruit) -
from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. As punishment God banished them both,
saying that women would have to endure the pain of childbirth.
Line 9 Boarded the train there's no getting off.
These last two lines bring a little uncertainty to the poem. Gone is the comical sense of the
heavy, slow moving caricatured mother, with swollen belly and thin legs. Now the speaker
leaves the reader with the idea that this situation is somewhat serious, the child-carrying
female must stay on to the end of the line, come what may.
Baby and mother are heading off into the future, the wheels are turning and both will have to
wait until the train reaches the terminus.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-
Metaphors-by-Sylvia-Plath
Interesting!
This poem consists of nine lines, with each line containing nine
syllables. The words Metaphors and Pregnancy have nine
letters each, and the months of pregnancy are also nine.
Sylvia Plath was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, and a novelist and
short story writer. She began to write poetry at the early of eight.
Her poems were filled with deep metaphors that made them
difficult to understand. They portrayed an 'in-your-face' reality
with a dark satiric undertone, and she was labeled as a
confessional poet.
Metaphors is a part of Colossus and Other Poems, that expresses
Plath's mixed feelings on being pregnant. It comes as a series of
metaphors in which Plath speaks of her pregnancy. She calls
herself a riddle, an elephant, a melon, a fat purse, among other
things that portray her indifference towards pregnancy and she
comes across as unhappy about being an expectant mother. The
poem can be considered as an expression of the mixed feelings
that every woman has, during pregnancy.
Metaphors
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,

This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
- Sylvia Plath.
Summary and Analysis

The poem starts off by proclaiming that she is a riddle. This
further sets the tone of the poem. It tells us that the speaker/poet
(lets consider the speaker as the poet) will be joking about herself.
Like any riddle, she has a hidden message in her.
This poem is shear craftsmanship of words. The word metaphor

and pregnancy both have 9 letters, each line of this poem has 9
words with 9 syllables, and of course there are 9 months of
pregnancy.
The humor continues in the second line as she continues to joke
about her size. She claims that she feels as large and heavy as an
elephant and a house.
Observe the word 'melon', it is full of seeds which will further grow
into plants and bare fruits of their own with no help of the initial
fruit.
She also compares her round belly or baby bump to a melon and
her legs to be thin and threadlike tendrils.
This is where it gets a little tricky to understand. Red is an
indication of flesh, while ivory indicates her fertile eggs.
The red fruit, also indicates the biblical forbidden fruit (apple). It
also indicates the 'fruit of thy womb' or 'fruit of her loins'. The
words 'ivory' and 'timber' both relate to expensive housing
metaphors, which lightly hint that she is only a home for her
unborn child.
She begins this line by comparing her growing belly to the baking
of bread. It is also a hint to the modern slang of having a 'bun in
the oven'.
In other words, she compares herself to a loaf of bread, while her

unborn child to yeast; live and growing bacteria, which is rising
(body and belly rising due to pregnancy).
This is where the poem turns sweet, but only for this line. She calls
her child as new-minted money, meaning that the child is valuable
for her. And she returns to self-deprecation, by comparing herself
to a fat purse, and a mere carrier of the money.
Pay special attention to the words 'means', 'stage', and 'cow'. She
calls herself to be only a means or mode or a platform for
something. This line show immense detachment from her child.
She indirectly says that she is just a way for the new life or
generation to come into this world. And it is as though the stage is
forgotten after a play is performed.
Traditionally, a calf is in a cow. Here the reverse role indicates that

the child is a separate individual in her frail childlike body. Some
may also argue that it means that, like a calf begins to grow on its
own outside the mother's body, this child too will grow on its own
once it is born. Here again, she boldly displays her detachment
and lack of maternal feelings towards her child.
Plath claims to have eaten a bag of green apples. Now if you think
it is just pregnancy cravings, you are far from understanding her
twisted tale. Green apples are comparatively sourer than regular
ones, depicting her sour feelings towards her child. She is
indirectly voicing her physical discomfort and 'sour' or negative
feelings towards her pregnant body, and the unborn child.
Apples are again hinting to Adam and Eve's story. She pokes at
the unholy fruit that brought the pains of labor to women. Unlike
Eve, the poet confesses of eating a whole bag of them, also
meaning that she is preparing herself to a world of sin and pain.
In this line, her helplessness and inability of backing off is
evidently visible. Plath probably is too far along in her pregnancy
for her to back out. Meaning that she has to carry on with the
pregnancy till the child is delivered.
In short, the poem Metaphors is a metaphoric ensemble
portraying the mixed feelings of a pregnant woman. Like many of
Plath's poems, this poem too, has a cryptic confession hidden
behind its baffling metaphors.
What is Metaphors about?

This poem is about pregnancy. Plath’s work is largely autobiographical, and
this piece was written during her first pregnancy. It examines the aesthetics,
effects, and implications of motherhood. On close examination, it implies that
Plath was at least somewhat ambivalent about giving birth.
Metaphors Analysis
Line One: I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
In the first line of the poem, Plath sets the tone for the rest of the piece.
Playfully, the reader is informed that the speaker (Plath) is a riddle. As implied
by the piece’s title, this is first of many puckish metaphors. The poet
challenges her readers to find the correct answer.
The first line offers at least two clues. First, is the reference to the number of
syllables. Looking closely, the first line does in fact contain nine syllables
(each line does in fact). Second is the number nine itself as pregnancy is
typically expected to last nine months. The fact that “nine” is mentioned
explicitly and that the number syllables per line is nine emphasizes the
numbers importance to the overall meaning of the poem.
The two images, of an elephant and a ponderous house, contained in the

second line of Metaphors both refer to form. Plath, somewhat self
deprecatingly, refers to herself as “an elephant.” The pachyderm is, of course,
a huge animal, but less obvious is the maternal nature of the beast. Elephants
live in herds of mothers and children, led by an older matron. Male elephants
are driven away at adulthood and live largely solitary existences, save for
mating. It’s possible that Plath admired this aspect of elephant society.
The second metaphor in this line, “a ponderous house,” refers to something

large, sheltering. The allusion to pregnancy is more obvious here pregnant
woman could reasonably be said to house her child, after all.
Line Three: A melon strolling on two tendrils.

Here the imagery is slightly more comical, as Plath calls to mind an overripe
piece of fruit meandering down the street on leg-like vines. Again, this line is
drawing attention to the aesthetics of pregnancy. The swollen belly becomes
an oversized melon, with slender, twig like legs holding up the added baby
weight.
On a deeper level, fruit is the by-product of reproduction. The tree is pollinated;

its buds swell into juicy fruit, full of its young, in the form of seeds.
Line Four: O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

Here the metaphor from the previous line is continued and expanded on. The
“red fruit” likely refers to Plath’s daughter, growing, ripening by the minute in
the red flesh of her mothers womb.
“Ivory” could be a reference to Plath’s skin, and the “fine timbers” would be her
legs. The poet was known, in part, for being beautiful, after all. In this line, I
imagine Plath looking down, skin stretched tightly over her belly like a melon’s
rind, her legs dwarfed, twig like. Perhaps the poet felt like the trunk of a tree
weighed down with fruit.
In line 5, Plath refers to herself to a loaf of bread, growing larger by the

moment. This metaphor is particularly apt for a couple of reasons. First, like
bread, pregnant women, and their fetuses, undergo a number of changes.
They grow, change shape, and become more complex on a cellular level.
The second reason this is an appropriate metaphor is the yeast. An integral

part of the bread making process, yeast is, in fact, alive. It is a living thing
suspended inside the bread making it grow, transforming it from the inside
out, just as a woman is transformed by the life growing inside of her.
Line Six: Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.

Plath continues to poke fun at herself in this line by referring to herself as a
“fat purse.” She probably did feel a bit overstuffed, but what is somewhat
troubling is how she refers to her unborn child: “money’s new-minted.”
Did the poet see her daughter as a commodity? Or did she fear that the child
would be exploited somehow? The latter seems more likely given her
tumultuous relationship with the child’s father, but it’s unclear to what extent
this preyed on Plath’s mind.
Line Seven: I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

The poet begins to explore some her more ambivalent feelings toward
pregnancy in this line. She feels like “a means,” something that is used to
achieve someone else’s goal. She is “a stage,” a place for other lives to play
out, and “a cow in calf,” a beast of burden used to produce meat and milk.
This line implies a couple of things. First, that Plath feels used. Perhaps she
feels that the baby was not her idea, that she was forced into pregnancy
situation somehow. It could also be that the feels used by her unborn child
itself.
The second implication of this line comes from the “cow in calf” metaphor.
What is the destiny of a calf? Calves are, at best, routinely taken from their
mothers’ teats and sold. At worst, they are eaten. Plath clearly had some
anxiety about her child’s fate.
In line 8, Plath describes herself as being full of fruit, possibly unripe fruit.
Anyone who ate a bag full of apples would undoubtedly find themselves
bloated and uncomfortable. Again, the fruit is a metaphor for her unborn child.
Plath is uncomfortably full of her unripe fruit at this point.
In the final metaphor of the piece on the last line (line 9), Plath describes a
feeling of helplessness. She is bound for an unknown destination and unable
to stop. She undoubtedly felt powerless, waiting for her child to be born, not
knowing when it would happen, what the consequences would be, or what
would become of the child. This somewhat bleak conclusion further implies
the anxiety felt by Plath during her pregnancy.
Historical Context
As aforementioned, Metaphors was written while Plath was pregnant with her
first child and published in 1959. Freida Rebecca Hughes, daughter of Plath
and her then husband Ted Hughes, was born April 1, 1960. Plath’s
relationships with her children are generally regarded as her happiest and
healthiest, despite the ambivalence displayed in this particular piece.
It’s also worth noting that apportion was more or less illegal in the US until
1973. The FDA didn’t approve the first oral contraceptive for women until 1960
(after the publication of this poem). It’s possible that these factors
contributed to the lack of control Plath expressed in the final lines.
Structure
While this poem is written in free verse, it is nonetheless highly structured. It is
nine lines long, each line containing nine syllables. As the title implies, it
consists of a list of several seemingly unconnected metaphors. Taken as a
whole, these metaphors paint a picture of how Plath felt and viewed herself
during her pregnancy.
METAPHORS SUMMARY
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X
This poem admits it, right off the bat: it's a riddle. Then it presents us with
several different metaphors to help us find the solution. We hear about an
elephant, a house, a couple of different kinds of fruit, bread rising, newness,
fatness, and a cow in calf. By this point in the poem, we figure out that the
riddle is about a pregnant woman, thanks to all the images of round things.
But these ways of describing a pregnant woman aren't necessarily the images
of expecting that we've come to expect—they're less than glowing and even a
little bitter.
Then, in the last two lines, we start to get even more of a feeling that the
speaker is uneasy about this whole pregnancy thing. She describes eating a
bag of apples—which we can imagine filling her stomach in the shape of this
pregnancy—as if she's done something wrong. She seems to feel stuck in this
wild and disproportionate situation and body, and there's no getting off this
train.
https://www.shmoop.com/metaphors-plath/summary.html
LINES 1-4 SUMMARY

 BACK
 NEXT
Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this

poem line-by-line.
X
Line 1
 That you are, dear poem. That you are. This line sets up the entire rest
of the poem, but could be interpreted a few different ways.
 The nine syllables part, though, is easy to explain. If you count the
number of syllables in each of the lines, you'll see that there are nine.
Plus the poem itself is nine lines long. That's just shy of what you might
be expecting in a neat little poem like this, as iambic
pentameter consists of 10 syllables per line.
 So, even from the number of syllables in each line of this poem, we can
sense that something's off here. Or maybe nothing's wrong, and the
format of the poem could be giving us our first clues to solving the
mystery—nine syllables per line, nine lines, and pregnancy lasts nine
months.
 As far as who the "I" is that's claiming to be this riddle, we've got a few
options. First, the "I" could simply be this poem. We've all read a poem
that felt distinctly like a riddle, so that's totally a possibility.
 On the other hand, the "I" could be a character, or a person. We'll hear a
lot of metaphors for pregnancy throughout the poem, so it's likely that
the "I" is actually the pregnant mother. The syllables could even be
a symbol for the nine months of pregnancy.
 We're guessing that the real answer might be a combo of these two
options (wouldn't that be the best of both worlds?), but we won't know
for sure until we read to the end of the poem and find out more about
this riddle.
Line 2
 A-ha! A clue. Take a minute, as you read, to visualize an elephant. We
think of a big, gray, heavy thing having a hard time getting around.
Elephants are ponderous, like the house that's described later in the
line. Ponderous is just a fancy way of saying heavy and huge—it's fitting
that a big, complicated word is used to describe the feeling of
heaviness. The word itself has got some heft.
 It's kind of weird, though, to think of a house as ponderous. Houses
are normally big and heavy—we'd like to see a person try to pick one up
—so a ponderous house must be a particularly large and clunky looking
house. It's paired with the image of an elephant, so think of this house
as the gigantic and ugly elephant of all houses.
 Then, once you've got the image of this huge animal and clunky house,
think about what this line could be a metaphor of. Some of the later
lines make us pretty sure that the riddle is about a pregnant woman,
but at this point, it's still pretty open to our imaginations.
 So imagine, if you will, a pregnant woman as an elephant and as a
house. The speaker of this poem seems to think pregnancy is awkward,
huge, and, well, ponderous.
 In other words, it's not sounding all that awesome so far.
Line 3
 Here, the imagery starts to tip us off in a more direct way that this
riddle is leading to pregnancy.
 Think about a giant melon, walking around on top of two tendrils, a
word which, by the way, has a couple meanings. Tendrils are like the
leafless vines of plants, reaching up around a fence post or tree, but the
word can also be used to describe anything that's delicate and curly,
such as tendrils of hair.
 Now that you have a clearer picture of what tendrils are like, imagine a
big old watermelon strolling, or walking leisurely on top of them. This is
a pretty dicey image; we can imagine the melon tumbling off the
tendrils at any bump in the road.
 And when you add to that the fact that this image is also an example
of personification—the melon is given the human ability of strolling—it
gets downright funny and playful.
 Take the next step and imagine a pregnant woman as this precarious
melon: a giant belly on top of normal legs, trying to walk around but
slowed down by the child in her womb. It's a playful image, sure, but it
also shows just how precarious a position this woman is in.
Line 4
 Now that we've thought about melons, we move to a different kind of
fruit, which we know only as red fruit. When we think about red fruit, we
think of something ripe and round like a tomato, an apple, or, perhaps,
like a pregnant woman's belly.
 We imagine that this fruit is just begging to be picked off the tree. In
fact, it's something we'd like to take off the tree, and which we'd
probably enjoy eating.
 This is a little creepy when we realize that this red fruit, too, is a
metaphor for pregnancy. After all, when someone bears children,
people say that they're "fruitful."
 We move from this red fruit to other desirable and valuable items—ivory
and timbers. Remember that elephant from line 2? Well we're betting it
had some ivory that a fair few poachers were seriously coveting.
 And the fine timbers could be timbers that you'd get from logging and
use for a particularly nice hardwood floor, or fancy furniture. Someone's
timber, though, could also mean their character. If someone is of a fine
timber, then they're a good person.
 The weird thing about this line is that, other than the whole being
fruitful thing, it doesn't seem to connect to pregnancy that much. But
then we think a little harder, and we realize that perhaps this part of the
riddle is telling us that pregnant women could be just like red fruit,
ivory, and timbers—desirable and expensive.
 They're also things that are harvested for someone else's gain. The
speaker seems to think pregnant women are objects of greed, and in a
way, consumer commodities. This line could be saying that a pregnant
woman is desirable to have not as a human being, but as a thing—a
sort of baby-making machine.
 Also note the emphasis of this line, which is started with an attention
catching "O" and ended with an exclamation point. Somehow, though,
we get the feeling that this excitement may be sarcastic. Or maybe it's
a woeful O.
LINES 5-9 SUMMARY

 BACK
 NEXT
Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this

poem line-by-line.
X
Line 5
 This line moves us back into some of the more obvious metaphors for
pregnancy. It's easy to picture a pregnant woman as a loaf of bread
rising, what with the slow swelling of her belly as a child grows inside.
 And even though we love freshly baked bread just as much as the next
person, there's something not very appetizing about thinking about a
baby along the same lines as bread fresh out of the oven.
 In fact, it sounds a little sad and cynical the way that the speaker thinks
of pregnant women. No pregnant woman that we know wants to think
of herself as a loaf of bread. Or a melon on skinny legs, either, for that
matter.
Line 6
 We're back to money again (like the expensive ivory and fine timbers
from line 4). The idea that the money is "new-minted" is referring to
freshly printed money. We can think of this literally— as printed dollars
or coins that are brand new, straight from the US mint. We can also
think of it metaphorically, in which case the pregnant woman's baby
would be the new money. Yeah—that's not a flattering comparison.
 The "fat purse" is another thing that can be taken on a few levels. First,
there's the idea that someone who has a "fat purse" is really rich. Their
purse is fat because of all the money they've presumably stuffed into
it.
 An alternate idea is that the woman is simply the metaphorical purse
for the metaphorical money. The line says literally that we're talking
about money in a purse, but we're supposed to solve the riddle and
figure out that it's referring to a baby in a woman's body. This
interpretation is aided by the use of the word "purse" as an innuendo
for the female sexual organ, especially for prostitutes. Again with the
flattering comparisons. Eesh.
 Also, check out the sounds in this line. There's some
awesome alliteration, or repetition of consonant sounds, in the phrase
"money's new-minted."
Line 7
 For the first time since the first line, we see the word "I" again. This
time, the meaning of the riddle is starting to become obvious.
 By saying "I'm a means," the speaker is telling us that she feels as if
she's being used, just a means to an end. She's just a stage in someone
else's master plan—the bearer of their fruit.
 Saying that she's a "cow in calf" is probably the most obvious part of
the riddle, making us certain that the riddle is giving
us metaphorsabout a pregnant woman.
 But the purpose of this line is not just to solidify our guesses about the
meaning of the poem. A cow that's pregnant—or, as farmers would say,
in calf—is an unflattering way to think about a pregnant woman. Mean
people sometimes use the word "cow" to describe women they don't
like, or women they think are fat and unattractive.
 There's also, to follow the theme from earlier in the poem, an economic
side to the idea of a pregnant woman being a cow in calf. Cows are
milked, or killed for slaughter, and sometimes calves are killed to make
veal. When we picture it that way, thinking about cows and their babies
on the same level as a pregnant woman is straight up messed up.
Slaughter and birth are polar opposites, and yet, somehow, our speaker
finds a way to connect these two events with a little trick
called figurative language.
Line 8
 Again, we see the "I" in this line. Eating a whole bag of green apples in a
short sitting, we could imagine, would make the speaker's stomach
quite round, so this is another metaphor for the large belly of
pregnancy.
 There's also a weird sense of guilt here. This admission to eating the
bag of green apples could mean that she felt that she's overindulged,
and that is the cause that she's become this huge, ponderous pregnant
woman.
 We can also imagine that these green apples would be quite sour.
Eating a bag of green apples would be a lot more difficult on the taste
buds than eating a bag of red apples.
 This image also makes us think of some other famous females, like
Snow White and Eve, who both took bites out of apples and, well, we
know how it turned out for those two.
Line 9
 This line, which is enjambed with the previous line, seems to imply that
boarding the train is either along the same thought-line, or as a result of
eating the bag of green apples.
 This line shows us that our speaker knows that, so to speak, once she's
gotten pregnant, she's boarded a train that she can't get off of—her life
is forever changed and there's no going back.
 For other women, who perhaps choose another path (abortion), or have
it thrust upon them (miscarriage), there's a chance things may change,
but this woman knows that she is stuck with this baby, this life as a
mother, for good.
 This train stretches for at least nine months, and, if the baby is not
given up for adoption, for the rest of the mother's life.
METAPHORS SYMBOLISM,
IMAGERY, ALLEGORY
 BACK
 NEXT
Size
Size matters when you're pregnant. It just does. And it definitely matters to our
speaker. We never hear directly about a woman's huge belly, but we hear
about elephants, houses, melons, and all so...
Fruit
In a poem about pregnancy, it's no surprise that fruit pops up here and there.
It's often said that marriages that bear children are fruitful. But fruit isn't
always good news. Remember Eve? Rememb...
Value
Throughout the poem, pregnant women, and the children they carry, are
compared to things of value. The speaker seems to feel as if she's been used
to produce something, as nothing more than a cow b...
William Ernest Henley and Invictus

Invictus is a poem which focuses on the human spirit and its ability to overcome
adversity. It is a rallying cry for those who find themselves in dark and trying situations,
who have to dig deep and fight for their lives. The poet certainly knew hard times and
needed all his strength to battle against disease.
Born in Gloucester, England in 1849, he was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis at the
age of 12 and went through years of pain and discomfort.
W.E. Henley wrote Invictus whilst in hospital undergoing treatment for tuberculosis of the
bones, specifically those in his left leg, which had to be amputated from the knee down.
He was still only a young man at this time.
He managed to save his right leg by refusing surgery and seeking an alternative form of
treatment from a Scottish doctor, James Lister.
It was during his time in Edinburgh that Henley met the writer Robert Louis Stevenson.
They became friends and corresponded on a regular basis. Stevenson later admitted that
he had based his character Long John Silver - from the book Treasure Island - on
Henley, he having a wooden leg, a strong rasping voice and a forceful personality.
Invictus does contain passion and defiance and it is easy to see just why so many use
the powerful lines to drum up courage and to shed light into the darker corners when all
else fails. Written in 1875 and published in 1888 it retains its original power and
conviction.
Henley's personal experience on the operating table and in a hospital bed, facing
possible death, certainly helped him create one of the most popular poems in the English
language.
Invictus
Invictus | Source
Analysis of Invictus
Invictus is a four stanza rhyming poem in iambic tetrameter, that is, with four beats or
stresses in each line. Occasional spondees occur to sharpen up this steady rhythm. The
end rhymes are all full, so the rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef ghgh. This helps keep
the whole poem tight.
Note the use of enjambment in the first three stanzas, where one line continues
meaning into the next without punctuation.
Each quatrain deals with the speaker's personal reaction in the face of adversity. The
basic idea is that, no matter what life throws at you don't let it get you down. Times may
be dark, the fates against you, but you know what? The human spirit is immensely strong
and capable of withstanding extreme stress and pain.
Stanza by Stanza Analysis
First Stanza
The imagery is strong. It is night time, the dark covers everything in black. The night then
becomes a symbol of hopelessness, a depressive medium in which the soul is lost. The
future cannot be seen.
This is similar in feeling to the idea of St John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic, writing in
the 16th century of 'the dark night of the soul', where the human spirit has lost its normal
confident, self-assured status.
Although the poem doesn't explicitly mention christianity, there is a sense that this
opening line is rooted in religiousness. The speaker is coming out of a period of total
darkness, a hell.
The second line reinforces the first - the black pit suggesting that this was a deep
depression, a spiritual darkness covering the whole world, the world being that of the
speaker.
And lines three and four acknowledge that help was given somewhere, somehow,
perhaps by a deity or deities, not by any named god or specific creator. The speaker
implies that their unconquerable soul is a gift from a godly realm. It's not quite prayer but
it is grateful thanks.
Second Stanza
There is an interesting start to this second quatrain - fell clutch is delicious wording for
the reader's tongue and basically means cruel grasp, the speaker stating clearly that
despite being tightly held, in an awful situation, they didn't once give in or show signs of
weakness.
Note how the speaker is at first subject to the negative but then responds in positive
fashion, a repeated theme throughout the poem.
The third and fourth lines follow a similar path. There is strong assonance - use of
repeated vowels:
Under the bludgeonings of chance/My head is bloody but unbowed.
The speaker here suggesting that despite being battered and wounded there is still no
subservient or self-pitying bow of the head. The head is still held high.
More Analysis
Third Stanza
The speaker looks into the future, taking into account all the anger and pain associated
with life on earth, and particularly in places such as hospitals. The 'Horror of the shade'
could be some hellish place of dark where depression lies, a menacing thought.
Again, the reader is advised that there will be no capitulation, no giving in. In fact, the
speaker has been unafraid throughout the ordeal, which has lasted years, and will
continue to show a brave face.
The message is underlined - the speaker has a clear intention, to survive against all the
odds.
Fourth Stanza
The climax to the poem contains an allusion to the christian bible, New Testament
Matthew (7:13/14) where Jesus says 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it'.
What is the speaker suggesting when the words It matters not how are placed in front
of strait the gate?
This is the gate that leads to the heavenly life. Conversely, the second line is an
inference to the depths of hell - the punishments being the sins written down during a
lifetime.
The speaker is affirming that, whether a person believes in heaven and hell or not, the
plain fact is that the individual is in charge, is in control of their own fate. Henley
experienced pain and distress for many years - the poem is rooted in the awful
circumstances he found himself in when a boy and a young man.
More importantly, the poem's message is universal in its appeal. It says quite
emphatically that, it doesn't matter who you are, believer or not, you can overcome dark
times by being brave and never losing faith in your own soul's strength.
Little wonder that many famous and many unknown people over the years have used the
inspiration of this poem to help them face personal trials and tribulations.
William Ernest Henley and Invictus

Invictus is a poem which focuses on the human spirit and its ability to overcome
adversity. It is a rallying cry for those who find themselves in dark and trying situations,
who have to dig deep and fight for their lives. The poet certainly knew hard times and
needed all his strength to battle against disease.
Born in Gloucester, England in 1849, he was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis at the
age of 12 and went through years of pain and discomfort.
W.E. Henley wrote Invictus whilst in hospital undergoing treatment for tuberculosis of the
bones, specifically those in his left leg, which had to be amputated from the knee down.
He was still only a young man at this time.
He managed to save his right leg by refusing surgery and seeking an alternative form of
treatment from a Scottish doctor, James Lister.
It was during his time in Edinburgh that Henley met the writer Robert Louis Stevenson.
They became friends and corresponded on a regular basis. Stevenson later admitted that
he had based his character Long John Silver - from the book Treasure Island - on
Henley, he having a wooden leg, a strong rasping voice and a forceful personality.
Invictus does contain passion and defiance and it is easy to see just why so many use
the powerful lines to drum up courage and to shed light into the darker corners when all
else fails. Written in 1875 and published in 1888 it retains its original power and
conviction.
Henley's personal experience on the operating table and in a hospital bed, facing
possible death, certainly helped him create one of the most popular poems in the English
language.
Invictus
Invictus | Source
Analysis of Invictus
Invictus is a four stanza rhyming poem in iambic tetrameter, that is, with four beats or
stresses in each line. Occasional spondees occur to sharpen up this steady rhythm. The
end rhymes are all full, so the rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef ghgh. This helps keep
the whole poem tight.
Note the use of enjambment in the first three stanzas, where one line continues
meaning into the next without punctuation.
Each quatrain deals with the speaker's personal reaction in the face of adversity. The
basic idea is that, no matter what life throws at you don't let it get you down. Times may
be dark, the fates against you, but you know what? The human spirit is immensely strong
and capable of withstanding extreme stress and pain.
Stanza by Stanza Analysis

First Stanza
The imagery is strong. It is night time, the dark covers everything in black. The night then
becomes a symbol of hopelessness, a depressive medium in which the soul is lost. The
future cannot be seen.
This is similar in feeling to the idea of St John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic, writing in
the 16th century of 'the dark night of the soul', where the human spirit has lost its normal
confident, self-assured status.
Although the poem doesn't explicitly mention christianity, there is a sense that this
opening line is rooted in religiousness. The speaker is coming out of a period of total
darkness, a hell.
The second line reinforces the first - the black pit suggesting that this was a deep
depression, a spiritual darkness covering the whole world, the world being that of the
speaker.
And lines three and four acknowledge that help was given somewhere, somehow,
perhaps by a deity or deities, not by any named god or specific creator. The speaker
implies that their unconquerable soul is a gift from a godly realm. It's not quite prayer but
it is grateful thanks.
Second Stanza
There is an interesting start to this second quatrain - fell clutch is delicious wording for
the reader's tongue and basically means cruel grasp, the speaker stating clearly that
despite being tightly held, in an awful situation, they didn't once give in or show signs of
weakness.
Note how the speaker is at first subject to the negative but then responds in positive
fashion, a repeated theme throughout the poem.
The third and fourth lines follow a similar path. There is strong assonance - use of
repeated vowels:
Under the bludgeonings of chance/My head is bloody but unbowed.
The speaker here suggesting that despite being battered and wounded there is still no
subservient or self-pitying bow of the head. The head is still held high.
More Analysis
Third Stanza
The speaker looks into the future, taking into account all the anger and pain associated
with life on earth, and particularly in places such as hospitals. The 'Horror of the shade'
could be some hellish place of dark where depression lies, a menacing thought.
Again, the reader is advised that there will be no capitulation, no giving in. In fact, the
speaker has been unafraid throughout the ordeal, which has lasted years, and will
continue to show a brave face.
The message is underlined - the speaker has a clear intention, to survive against all the
odds.
Fourth Stanza
The climax to the poem contains an allusion to the christian bible, New Testament
Matthew (7:13/14) where Jesus says 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it'.
What is the speaker suggesting when the words It matters not how are placed in front
of strait the gate?
This is the gate that leads to the heavenly life. Conversely, the second line is an
inference to the depths of hell - the punishments being the sins written down during a
lifetime.
The speaker is affirming that, whether a person believes in heaven and hell or not, the
plain fact is that the individual is in charge, is in control of their own fate. Henley
experienced pain and distress for many years - the poem is rooted in the awful
circumstances he found himself in when a boy and a young man.
More importantly, the poem's message is universal in its appeal. It says quite
emphatically that, it doesn't matter who you are, believer or not, you can overcome dark
times by being brave and never losing faith in your own soul's strength.
Little wonder that many famous and many unknown people over the years have used the
inspiration of this poem to help them face personal trials and tribulations.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Invictus-by-WEHenley
Here is an analysis of W.E. Henley’s famous and inspiration poem, Invictus. It is said
that William Ernest Henley wrote the poem in 1875 for a Scottish flour merchant named
Robert Thomas Hamilton Bruce. It was first published in 1888—without a title—in Henley’s
first volume of poetry. The title of the poem, Invictus, which is Latin for “unconquered,” was
given by the editor of The Oxford Book of English Verse. The film is a favorite in popular
culture, making appearances in movies such as Casablanca and the Nelson Mandela movie of
the same name. Politicians and authors also love to quote the inspirational last two lines of
the poem: “I am the master of my fate:/I am the captain of my soul.”
Invictus Summary
This is a Victorian poem that is made up of four stanzas and sixteen lines, with four
lines in each stanza. It has a set rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef ghgh. The poem also
has a set rhythm: each line contains eight syllables. In the poem, the speaker is faced
with seemingly insurmountable challenges. Throughout it all, however, he perseveres
and is successful in his endeavors. He faces each challenge with courage and is not
afraid, and he is able to surmount any hardship.
Breakdown Analysis of Invictus

In the first stanza, the speaker immediately sets the stage for his reader. He says, “Out
of the night that covers me,/Black as the Pit from pole to pole.” Henley’s use of
imagery is strong from the very beginning. It is quite easy for the reader to picture a
night that is completely dark. In these two lines, the poet also creates a metaphor, as
the night to which the speaker refers can actually represent any quandary in which the
speaker finds himself. It is important here to think about the connotations of the word
“night.” Since it is dark and one cannot see, it is easy for horrible things to happen,
particularly when the night is “black as the Pit.” It is also curious that Henley chose to
capitalize “Pit,” using a simile to compare the darkness of the night to this hole. One
reason Henley may have chosen to capitalize Pit is to make a reference to Hell, which
is considered to be the bleakest and blackest of places. By using the phrase “from pole
to pole,” the poet conjures up an image of the world, and it gives an almost nautical
feel to the poem. It can be inferred, particularly when one knows the occupation of the
man to whom the poem was dedicated, that our fearless speaker is perhaps a captain
of a ship, particularly when he gives himself that title at the end of the poem. In the
next two lines of the first stanza, Henley writes, “I thank whatever gods may be/For
my unconquerable soul.” While the speaker does not know which Higher Beings truly
exist, he takes the time to thank them for giving him a soul that cannot be conquered.
Perhaps Henley’s use of the word unconquerable here is what inspired the editor
of The Oxford Book of English Verse to title the poem Invictus.
The second stanza is a continuation of the first. Henley writes, “In the fell clutch of
circumstance/I have not winced nor cried aloud.” In other words, the speaker has not
allowed himself to become a victim of the events that have transpired in his life. In
these lines, Henley personifies circumstance, giving it human-like qualities to show
just how tightly the events of one’s life can take hold. Throughout all that he has been
dealt, the speaker has not even cringed or cried about what has happened. He does
admit, however, in the next two lines that he has not emerged unscathed. Henley
writes, “Under the bludgeonings of chance/My head is bloody, but unbowed.” While
he may have physical scars, he has never bowed his head in defeat; instead, he has
kept it held high. Henley also employs alliteration in this stanza, repeating the “b”
sound, which creates a harsh rhythm to the poem.
The third stanza takes a darker turn, for the speaker refers to an afterlife that is filled
with horror. Henley writes, “Beyond this place of wrath and tears/Looms but the
Horror of the shade.” The speakers seems to be saying here that he knows that what
he has endured in this life is nothing compared to what lies ahead in the “shade,”
which is a reference to death. He again tells his reader that he does not fear anything.
Lines eleven and twelve read, “And yet the menace of the years/Finds, and shall find,
me unafraid.” The speaker will remain fearless, even in the face of death and what
comes after.
The fourth stanza, while still fairly dark, is somewhat more uplifting,
particularly in the last two lines of the poem. Henley writes,
It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
The nautical imagery once again returns in this stanza, with the speaker
referring to himself as a captain, but also commenting that it does not matter
how narrow the path is to the gates of the afterlife, he will make it with no
problems. And when he is being judged, no matter how many punishments
are listed, he will have decided his fate, and he will have steered his own
course. These last two lines are considered to be some of the most famous
lines in all of literature, and they are a continued source of inspiration for
people of all walks of life.
Historical Background
Many scholars believe Henley wrote this poem about himself, since he wrote
it while lying in a hospital bed. Henley was very sick as a young boy, which
later resulted in him contracting an infection that spread to his leg. The leg
was amputated, and doctors thought they would have to do the same to the
other leg, as well, but Henley persuaded another doctor to try a new treatment
that was able to prevent amputation. Many Victorian writers often
incorporated nature into their poetry, and Henley continued this trend, which is
quite evident in the lines of Invictus.
Invictus, meaning “unconquerable” or “undefeated” in Latin, is a poem by William

Ernest Henley. The poem was written while Henley was in the hospital being treated
for tuberculosis of the bone, also known as Pott’s disease. He had had the disease
since he was very young, and his foot had been amputated shortly before he wrote the
poem. This poem is about courage in the face of death, and holding on to one’s own
dignity despite the indignities life places before us.
I will take you through the poem, and explain it stanzas by stanza to give you a clear
idea of what the poem is trying to tell you. The poem itself is very simple in form and
devices, and as such comes as a relief in a time where flowery and ambiguous writing
ran wild. To start off a little bit about the Background of the Poem.
Background:
At the age of 12, Henley contracted tuberculosis of the bone. A few years later, the
disease progressed to his foot, and physicians announced that the only way to save his
life was to amputate directly below the knee. It was amputated when he was 17.
Despite his disability, he survived with one foot intact and led an active life until his
death at the age of 53.
This poem was written by Henley shortly after his leg was amputated and although he
wrote many poems while in hospital, this one is largely his claim to fame.
Dedication:
Henley dedicated the poem to Robert Thomas Hamilton Bruce (1846-1899), a
Scottish flour merchant. After Hamilton Bruce’s death, published collections of
Henley’s poems often included either of these dedication lines preceding the
poem: “I.M.R.T. Hamilton Bruce” or “In Memoriam R.T.H.B.” (“In Memory of
Robert Thomas Hamilton Bruce”). The surname Hamilton Bruce is sometimes
spelled with a hyphen (Hamilton-Bruce).
Title:
The strong, resilient enunciation of the poem’s title carries a remarkable effect from
the outset, emphasizing Henley’s intention to show might in the face of adversity. The
Latin, powerful-sounding Invictus‘s definition is no less noticeable: the
“unconquerable.“
Theme:
The theme of the poem is the will to survive in the face of a severe test.
Henley himself faced such a test. After contracting tuberculosis of the bone in
his youth, he suffered a tubercular infection when he was in his early twenties
that resulted in amputation of a leg below the knee. When physicians
informed him that he must undergo a similar operation on the other leg, he
enlisted the services of Dr. Joseph Lister (1827-1912), the developer of
antiseptic medicine. He saved the leg. During Henley’s twenty-month ordeal
between 1873 and 1875 at the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary in Scotland, he
wrote “Invictus” and other poems. Years later, his friend Robert Louis
Stevenson based the character Long John Silver (a peg-legged pirate in the
Stevenson novel Treasure Island) on Henley.
In the first stanza, Henley refers to the “night that covers me, black as the pit from
pole to pole” (lines 1 and 2); this night is generally a metaphor for the hardships and
problems of a worldly existence, but the line could clearly be understood at the
discretion of the reader by assigning the night any of negative roles (any particular
hardship that may encompass a person’s entire life, such as a handicap like Henley’s;
persistent, taxing responsibilities; or sustained emotional injury). The next line, “the
pit from pole to pole” is a basic way of likening the darkness (or the difficulty) of the
night to the lightless, deep desolation of the center of the earth, and its meaning does
not require any change as understanding of the poem changes. Lines 3 and 4, “I thank
whatever gods may be/for my unconquerable soul,” parallel the title and introduce the
poem’s primary focus. By suggesting that the soul is the creation of a higher power,
the line reinforces the theme of the unconquerable by associating the soul with the
interminable. Some critics have argued that line 3 is hard proof of the author’s
agnosticism, but other interpretations have left the statement as a choice in poetic
device rather than a religious preference, even hailing the poem as one not quite
contradictory (as agnostic analyses contend) to conventional Christianity. Regardless
of this, Henley definitely intended to carry the meaning of his poetry to the spiritual
level, which is further explored in the third stanza.
The second stanza bears the image of a hapless victim whose predators are the violent
“circumstance” and “chance”; both abstract concepts are solidified by lines 6-9. Line
6, “In the fell clutch of circumstance,” followed by line 7, “I have not winced nor
cried aloud” immediately instills an image of an animal captured by the “fell clutch”
of a predatory bird. The circumstance, in Henley’s case, was likely a reference to his
unfortunate condition but, much like the many parts of the poem, is manipulable to
personal perspective. Though cursed with a great burden, he did not “wince nor cry
aloud,” that is, complain vociferously about his pain, as an animal carried away would
squeal to its demise. Then Chance, in lines 8-9, appears with a baseball bat to do his
damage: “Under the bludgeoning of chance/my head is bloody, but unbowed.”
Henley’s choice of imagery best describes any case of one downtrodden by
misfortune who has not conceded due to events that transpire beyond his control,
much as a hardy prisoner beaten by his captors would not allow his head to bow in
defeat.
Both warning and consoling, the third stanza brings in something past that introduced
in the second, showing a more spiritual side of the poem: “Beyond this place of wrath
and tears/looms the Horror of the shade” (lines 11 and 12). The “place of wrath and
tears” of which Henley writes is the world we live in, the place where we are the prey
of circumstance and the prisoners of chance. Beyond it, however, Henley suggests
that there is more by expressing his belief in an afterlife, but he does not simply
relegate the “Beyond” to simple optimism. Line 12’s “Horror of the shade” is the
unknown that is across the threshold of life and death that may hold more hardships
for the soul yet, and it is undoubtedly a concept explored by many poets. “The
menace of the years” (Line 13), of course, is the expiration of our worldly time, the
end of which would mark the beginning of the journey to the shade beyond. To this,
Henley holds defiantly that this imminent end “finds, and shall find him unafraid.”
This disregard for fear is a declaration of acceptance of all that will come at the
expiration of the flesh.
Possibly the most famous and memorable of all, the fourth stanza is the poem’s final
affirmation of spiritual fortitude. Lines 16 and 17 are strongly associated with
Christian ideas and images. “It matters not how strait the gate” (line 16) contains a
direct biblical allusion: “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto
life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). Line 16 is not a contradiction of
the straight and narrow path, but rather an acceptance of its challenge, similar to that
in the third stanza. “Scroll,” in line 17, again alludes to heavenly imagery; it does not
matter what punishments one may bear from life and the afterlife as long as one is
confidently in control. The bold, fearless end to the poem is an affirmation that, as the
decision-makers in our lifetimes, we are the sole authorities over ourselves, and a
powerful line that seems to have a wide variety of applications for any situation. Left
in context and even if taken slightly out of context of the poem, its intense
implications of power (“master” and “captain”) in combination with its subjects (the
fate and the soul, things that are normally implied to be beyond our reach) give the
final stanza an intrinsic quality found in all things frequently quoted as words of
strength, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “We have nothing to fear but fear
itself.” Coincidentally enough, FDR was known to quote the concluding couplet
of Invictus himself when asked how he dealt with his struggle with polio.
https://invictusexplained.wordpress.com/
Poem Analysis of
Invictus by William
Ernest Henley
By Gary R. Hess. Category: Poetry Analysis
"Invictus" was written by the English poet William Ernest
Henley. The poem is a short Victorian, written in 1875 and
published in 1888. The poem was originally untitled, but in
1900 Arthur Quiller-Couch included the poem along with the
title "Invictus" in his book The Oxford Book of English Verse.
In order to completely understand the meaning of this poem,
it is important to know the life of William Ernest Henley. As a
young boy, Henley developed tuberculosis of the bone. At
the age of 25, the tuberculosis spread to his foot. Physicians
decided that in order to safe Henley's life, they must
amputate his leg below the knee. While in the hospital bed,
Henley wrote the poem "Invictus."
You may also wish to read how to analyze a poem.

The poem "Invictus" is made up of sixteen lines and is
divided into four stanzas. The rhyme scheme is abab-cdcd-
efefef-ghgh. The writing is short and contains just eight
syllables to each line. By linking the poem to the author's
life, it can be easily analyzed.
1. "Out of the night that covers me," describes the troubles of his early life. He is
covered "pole to pole" with something terrible. Luckily, his soul is unhindered.
2. "In the fell clutch of circumstance" continues the story. He has high spirits,
regardless of what has happened. His body may have blood stains, but he is not ashamed.
3. The third stanza states that even though he may not know what is to come, he
is unafraid and ready for life.
4. The last stanza states that even though his future may be established due to the
disease, he will continue on and control his own fate and soul with whatever time he has.
This poem is a masterpiece and is still referenced to this day.
The movie titled "Invictus" refers to this very poem
throughout the film. It is also read within "The Capture of the
Green River Killer", and the words of "Invictus" were the last
words spoken by Timothy McVeigh.
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Last update: Fri, 07/25/2018 - 06:09
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