O rose, thou art sick! / The invisible worm, / That flies in the night, / In the howling storm,
The poem has only eight lines, and Blake never explained it. Readers have taken the worm that finds the rose’s “bed of crimson joy” to stand for hidden desire, disease or the corruption of innocence.
I was angry with my friend: / I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
Piping down the valleys wild, / Piping songs of pleasant glee, / On a cloud I saw a child, / And he laughing said to me:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night;
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness;
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.