Symbol in poetry: Study Guide (English Literature 8.3)

What makes something a symbol?

A symbol is a concrete thing (an object, a place, an action, a creature) that, in the way a poem uses it, stands for something beyond itself. The key phrase is in the way a poem uses it. A rose in a garden is a plant. A rose that a poem addresses, endangers and mourns is carrying more weight than a plant needs to carry, and that extra weight is the sign that you may be looking at a symbol.

Three things help you tell symbols from their neighbours.

• A symbol is not the same as an image. An image appeals to the senses (“a yellow light”). A symbol may use an image, but it also points to something larger. Many images are only descriptive.
• A symbol is not a fixed code. The idea that “a rose means love” belongs in a dictionary of symbols, not in a poem. What a symbol suggests is built by the poem: through repetition, position, the things around it, and what the speaker says or does to it.
• A symbol is not the same as a metaphor. A metaphor states or implies a comparison (“the mind-forged manacles”). A symbol is a thing in the poem’s world that also resonates beyond it. A single phrase can be both, but the two ideas ask different questions. With a metaphor you ask what is being compared to what. With a symbol you ask what a thing stands for, and how the poem makes it do so.

Symbols matter to interpretation because they often imply the attitude or perspective of the speaker. If a poem treats a small object with awe, fear or tenderness, the way it does so tells you what the speaker feels about whatever the object represents.

Five questions to ask about a possible symbol

1. Spot it. What concrete thing receives more attention, emotion or position than its literal job needs?
2. Track it. Does it recur, or does the poem set it among other loaded words? What happens to it?
3. Suggest. What does it come to stand for in this poem? State this as a sentence about the poem, not as a single word.
4. Attitude. How does the speaker treat it (address, fear, ignore, tend), and what does that treatment imply about the speaker’s perspective?
5. Whole. How does the symbol change the meaning of the poem as a whole, including its ending?

Worked example 1: a rose, a worm and a secret

William Blake’s “The Sick Rose” was published in Songs of Experience (1794). It is eight lines long, so it can be quoted entire.

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.

Spot. The rose is addressed directly (“thou”), as a person might be, and the speaker’s cry “O rose, thou art sick!” is a response to something unseen. The worm is “invisible” and yet it “flies”, which is odd for a worm. Both things receive more attention than a gardening problem would.

Track. The two figures are set in a scene of danger: “night” and “howling storm”. The rose’s “bed” is of “crimson joy”, and the destroyer comes with “love”, described as “dark” and “secret”. The poem pairs positive words (joy, love) with destructive ones (sick, destroy), so the symbols are bound up with the poem’s most charged vocabulary.

Suggest. A one-to-one decoding such as “rose equals a woman and worm equals a lover” would limit the poem. The poem itself gives more specific clues. The rose’s “bed of crimson joy” can be a flower bed and an intimate bed, and “crimson” suggests passion and blood. The worm’s love is “secret”, and the secrecy is what destroys. A defensible reading is that the rose stands for a beautiful, open, vulnerable life or joy, and the worm for a hidden, corrupting force, possibly a love that is secretive and possessive, that destroys what it touches.

Attitude. The speaker’s address (“thou art sick!”) is urgent, compassionate and helpless. He sees what the rose cannot see (the worm is “invisible”), but he describes the damage instead of preventing it. The attitude is of horrified pity.

Whole. The poem does not tell us what the rose or the worm “mean”, and the refusal is meaningful. It lets the reader feel that a joy can be destroyed from within by something hidden, whether a person, a relationship or a social habit. The brevity of the poem makes the destruction seem sudden and complete.

Model commentary: “By placing the ‘invisible worm’ inside the rose’s ‘bed of crimson joy’, Blake makes the symbols of beauty and corruption share one space, so the speaker’s pity for the rose becomes a warning that secret love can destroy the very joy it claims to feed.”

Worked example 2: two buildings and what they say

Blake’s “London”, from the same collection (Songs of Experience, 1794), gives a symbol its own stanza. After describing marks of weakness and woe in every face, the speaker says:

How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

Spot. The church and the palace are not described as buildings: they are things that react to human suffering. A church is “blackened” and “appalled” by the sweeper’s cry. A palace wall has blood running down it. A building with blood on it is more than a building.

Track. The two symbols appear in parallel clauses and are paired with two human figures: the child sweeper and the soldier. In each case the poor person’s voice (“cry”, “sigh”) is an accusation, and the institution is the thing marked by it.

Suggest. Church and palace stand for institutions, religious and royal power, that the poem suggests are stained by the suffering they permit or cause. The word “blackening” can mean literally that soot from the chimneys blackens the church, and figuratively that the church’s moral standing darkens. “Appals” may carry both horror and a sense of being made pale, as a cloth is “palled”. The ambiguity helps the symbol carry both the physical and the moral meaning.

Attitude. The speaker listens (“I hear”), not just observes. His tone is accusatory, and he treats the sweeper’s cry and the soldier’s sigh as testimony against the institutions.

Whole. The symbols turn a walk through the city into an indictment. The poem’s earlier images of “marks of weakness, marks of woe” become the marks left on churches and palaces, so that the suffering of the poor is shown as a stain on the powerful.

Weak and strong versions side by side

Weak	Why it falls short	Stronger
“The rose symbolises love.”	One-to-one code; ignores how this poem uses the rose.	“The rose, addressed as ‘thou’ and given a ‘bed of crimson joy’, stands for a vulnerable life of passion that something hidden can destroy.”
“The worm is evil.”	A label, not an explanation.	“Because the worm is ‘invisible’ and its love ‘secret’, it stands for a destructive force that works unseen.”
“The church is a symbol of religion.”	Names what it stands for, not what the poem does with it.	“The ‘blackening church’ symbolises an institution morally stained by suffering it does not relieve.”
“The symbols show the poet’s feelings.”	Vague: which feelings, and how?	“Treating the sweeper’s cry as an accusation, the speaker shows an angry, listening perspective on power.”

Common misconceptions

• “A symbol has one correct meaning.” A symbol in a good poem is richer than a code. Argue for the meaning the poem builds, and keep your claim defensible.
• “If it is an object, it is a symbol.” Many objects are just objects. A symbol is marked by weight: repetition, position, emotional charge, the speaker’s treatment.
• “Symbol and metaphor are the same.” They overlap, but they ask different questions. A metaphor compares; a symbol represents.
• “I must know what the poet intended.” You need evidence from the poem. Biographical guesses are not evidence.
• “Explaining the symbol is enough.” The marks are earned by tying the symbol to the speaker’s attitude and the whole poem.
• “There is only room for one symbol.” Poems may contain several that interact; you can explain how they affect one another, but only if you have first explained each one.

Where this leads

Next, work through the practice questions, then check the revision notes and checklist. In Topic 8.4 the focus moves from single symbols to comparisons that are developed over many lines, which you will analyse piece by piece.