These are the following interpretations I have of this:
- A need to be free sexually and not bound by social convention - a criticism of marriage - the speaker wants to go to the new flower but stays with the rose tree out of pure propriety, such a choice benefits no one. The male speaker stays not out of love or even desire but duty, this is displayed as wrong.
- Male repression and female jealousy = a relationship that benefits neither and is held together only by habit tending "day and night" = Blake's view of blind adherence to marriage simply because it is an institution - it's not so much that he is criticising marriage, but he is critical of relationships which are only held together by this constitution.
- Others have read it as a display of the superficiliality of beauty..the rose tree was only pretty when happy - but it had a darker other side "the thorns" - and when threatened it showed its true colours, so to speak.
- In both readings the flowers are symbolic of women and the speaker male.
- I have already visited this site: [www.english.uga.edu] /> And am just looking at any other advice, also how does this poem linked into Blake's views of sexuality as a whole?

Thank you!

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