Songs of Experience: Ah! Sun-flower

What first interested me about "Ah! Sun-flower" was the immediate significance in the symbolism of the sunflower. Sunflowers are not the first item to come to mind when thinking of an object that is experienced. An image so bright and seemingly cheerful does not necessarily coincide with the more somber attitude that the majority of the poems in Songs of Experience tend to take on. The more times I read it, however, the more I began to realize that the sunflower took on the role of what could be described as the adult. The sunflower watches the sun, day after day, as it makes its journey across the sky, or heaven. "Seeking after that sweet golden clime" (3), the sunflower is forced to only watch the sun, and not make the journey itself, living its life forever hoping, but never accomplishing its goal. The sunflower becomes the experienced object in the poem in that sees its own limitations, and sees its own fate as being forever grounded.

This is further emphasized when the Blake introduces "the Youth" and "the pale Virgin" (5,6). These are two characters that are traditionally naive and innocent. It is particularly interesting that Blake makes a point of drawing attention to the coloring of the Virgin. In comparison to the Sunflower, the Virgin becomes more innocent. The sun that the sunflower aspires to be has not had a chance to affect the Virgin. In a larger sense, the world has not had a chance to influence the Virgin or make the character experienced in worldly matters.

Ultimately, it appears that Blake asserts that the Experienced cannot reach the final destination, Heaven. Both the youth and the virgin are able to "arise from their graves and aspire,/ Where my Sun-flower wishes to go" (7,8). The innocent, inexperienced characters in the poem are able to reach the goal that the experienced cannot, putting them in an Eden scenario. The characters unburdened with knowledge of the world are able to reach a place of paradise, while the knowledgable are forced to watch the innocent move forward. The inexperienced characters are the ones that are admirable to the speaker, who desires the ignorance the youth and the virgin have in the poem. The first line of the poem even shows the speaker's tiring of knowledge and experience. Blake begins by having his narrator speak what could be described as a sigh. This is exaggerated by Blake describing it as "weary of time" (1).