Love can always turn sour when misunderstandings happen and jealously enters the heart. The poem, My Pretty ROSE TREE, in The Longman Anthology of British Literature, was originally published in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience by William Blake. My Pretty ROSE TREE, under the section of ‘Experience’, tells a simple yet heartful story about a love gone wrong. Blake uses tone, rhyme, and figurative word choice to paint a picture with nature imagery to highlight the emotions and themes of love and jealously.
The tone starts off light, with the narrator being presented a beautiful ‘flower’ and him being tempted to acquire it. “A flower was offerd to me; / Such a flower as May never bore”, (Line 1-2) the narrator has presumably never …show more content…
Without deeper looking, the poem could be about nature. If read literally, its nothing more than a sweet poem about nature, flowers, and trees. There is no explicit implications of the flower and Rose-tree being human, or being anything other than their name sakes. However, the consistent personification and possessive word use of ‘my’, ‘mine’, and ‘her’ give it the allusion that Blake could be talking about women and using the words ‘flower’ and ‘Rose-tree’ as nicknames. There is also the subtle capitalization of ‘Rose-Tree’, making it a noun, implying it to a position of a Human. Instead of identifying who they were, they are disguised for what could be many reasons, such as protection, or embarrassment. In addition, the poem was published in Songs of Experience for a specific reason, had it been an innocent and uncomplicated poem, it would have, logically, been in Songs of Innocence. Love is innocent, yes, but jealously, pain, and temptation is not. Learned behavior from repeat exposure, e.g. being hurt or cheated on, explains reacting with negativity and turning away. It’s gained from experience, leaving the innocent state behind. This concept does not hold up when applied to a literal reading of the poem, but with a figurative reading, and the perspective of the nature being symbolic for actual people, there is a connection worth exploring.
“My Pretty ROSE TREE” by William Blake is a poem expressing the pains of love. Blake’s techniques capture the feelings, sounds, and style of language. With his use of simple lines, alternative rhyme scheme, and metaphorical imagery, Blake creates and manipulates the emotional response, mood, and theme. The experiences being represented are relatable by human nature; the emotions being experienced by the narrator and the subject are universal. The poem manages to create a distinct effect and a clear meaning of
The tone starts off light, with the narrator being presented a beautiful ‘flower’ and him being tempted to acquire it. “A flower was offerd to me; / Such a flower as May never bore”, (Line 1-2) the narrator has presumably never …show more content…
Without deeper looking, the poem could be about nature. If read literally, its nothing more than a sweet poem about nature, flowers, and trees. There is no explicit implications of the flower and Rose-tree being human, or being anything other than their name sakes. However, the consistent personification and possessive word use of ‘my’, ‘mine’, and ‘her’ give it the allusion that Blake could be talking about women and using the words ‘flower’ and ‘Rose-tree’ as nicknames. There is also the subtle capitalization of ‘Rose-Tree’, making it a noun, implying it to a position of a Human. Instead of identifying who they were, they are disguised for what could be many reasons, such as protection, or embarrassment. In addition, the poem was published in Songs of Experience for a specific reason, had it been an innocent and uncomplicated poem, it would have, logically, been in Songs of Innocence. Love is innocent, yes, but jealously, pain, and temptation is not. Learned behavior from repeat exposure, e.g. being hurt or cheated on, explains reacting with negativity and turning away. It’s gained from experience, leaving the innocent state behind. This concept does not hold up when applied to a literal reading of the poem, but with a figurative reading, and the perspective of the nature being symbolic for actual people, there is a connection worth exploring.
“My Pretty ROSE TREE” by William Blake is a poem expressing the pains of love. Blake’s techniques capture the feelings, sounds, and style of language. With his use of simple lines, alternative rhyme scheme, and metaphorical imagery, Blake creates and manipulates the emotional response, mood, and theme. The experiences being represented are relatable by human nature; the emotions being experienced by the narrator and the subject are universal. The poem manages to create a distinct effect and a clear meaning of