In both poems, Blake uses the common symbol of a flower to represent a woman to highlight the problem with this conception of the feminine. Although she is the speaker of the Innocence poem "The Flower", the young flower remains motionless while observing the activity of two birds in the same area. The flower watches the sparrow “seek[s] [its] narrow cradle” or returns to its nest, a representation of a male returning home (5). In the next stanza, the flower notes a robin “sobbing” next to her (10). All the action of the poem is carried out by the birds while the flower remains stationary and only “sees” and “hears” (4, 10). The activity versus passivity in the poem aligns the birds with the masculine and the flower with the feminine, connecting to traditional views of each gender in terms of sex and germination. While males, like birds, actively seek the right mate, females, like the flower, exist only as an object of desire and attraction. A similar genre is observed in the Experience poem “The Sick Rose”. Like the flower, the rose is at the center of the poem even though the action involves a more active being interacting with it. The only verb in the poem attached to the rose is found in the first line where the speaker proclaims: “O Rose, you are sick” (1). All other actions are carried out by “The invisible worm” which eats the rose (2). While the birds in "The Blossom" are meant to be interpreted as masculine due to their active role in germination, the flower's observation that the sparrow flies "as fast as an arrow", an explicitly phallic image, contributes to the alignment of the bird with the males (4). ). The worm in "The Sick Rose" is also phallic and, like the bird, plays an active role in the action of the poem....... middle of paper ......te social injustice d expect a woman to be recklessly passive in matters of sex, then condemn her for enabling his corruption. When the two poems are read together, a greater irony emerges: the idea that the thoughtless sexuality of "The Blossom" is promoted and then condemned when it results in corruption, as seen in "The Sick Rose." The speaker of “The Sick Rose” contributes to this state of mind: he notes the destruction of women and condemns her for it without noticing the inequity of the system which promotes this cycle. It is even possible that the speaker is a religious figure denouncing the woman for her internal evil. The corrupting worm is serpentine and evokes the image of Satan leading Eve towards the fall. This reading draws attention to the idea of ​​original sin and places more blame on women, thus reinforcing the speaker's blame of the rose..