Flower of Love explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Love and Loss

  The poem centers on a passionate love that is now lost, with the speaker lamenting the wasted days and inevitable parting.

• Art and Immortality

  The speaker contrasts the poet's crown of bays with the lover's crown of myrtle, exploring the tension between artistic fame and personal love.

• Transience and Mortality

  The imagery of the crimson flower eaten by the cankerworm, the fallen petals of youth, and Death as the silent pilot underscores the fleeting nature of life and love.

Characters to notice

• Love

  The beloved addressed as 'Sweet' and 'Flower of Love'; the central figure of the speaker's passion.

• Dante

  Mentioned as a figure whose path the speaker might have trod, seeing the heavens open like the Florentine.

• Keats

  Imagined lifting his hymeneal curls and kissing the speaker's forehead in a vision of artistic brotherhood.

• Death

  Described as the silent pilot who comes at last after the storm of youth.

• Mary

  Referenced as 'God's own mother,' less dear to the speaker than the beloved.

• The Wretched Cyprian

  Mentioned as 'the Cytheraean' rising like an argent lily from the sea, less dear than the beloved.

Key passages

• “Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.”

  I don't blame you, my love; the fault is mine. If I weren't so ordinary, I could have achieved greater things and experienced a broader, brighter existence.

  The speaker takes responsibility for his limitations, suggesting that his common nature prevented him from reaching higher artistic or spiritual heights.

• “For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth, And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth.”

  The beautiful flower of our life is destroyed by the destructive worm of truth, and once youth's petals fall, they cannot be recovered.

  This metaphor conveys how truth has corrupted the beauty of their love, and youth's vitality is irretrievably lost.

• “I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days, I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays.”

  I have chosen my path and lived out my poetry. Even though my youth was spent in what some might call waste, I value the myrtle crown of love more than the laurel crown of poetic fame.

  The speaker concludes that love, despite its costs, is more valuable than literary renown.