Ah! Sun-flower
William Blake
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
The visionary English poet William Blake included "Ah! Sun-flower" in his famous 1794 collection Songs of Innocence and Experience. The poem is part of the Experience section of the collection, and it presents life on earth as filled with an intense desire to be reunited with God in heaven. The poem's speaker describes a "weary" sunflower as desperately seeking the sun, whose movements across the sky it closely tracks each day. The "sweet golden clime" the flower stretches toward represents heaven, a destination that the speaker argues human beings also long to reach. The short yet deceptively complicated poem has elicited plenty of symbolic interpretations since its publication (many related to frustrated love and devotion), and it's also possible to read it as subtly criticizing the denial of earthly pleasures in the name of gaining entrance to heaven.
“Ah! Sun-flower” Summary
Oh, sunflower, so tired of time passing! You keep a close watch on the sun as it moves through the sky. You long for that lovely, sunny world where travelers' journeys come to an end.
The young person who has wasted away with unfulfilled longing and the fair virgin who is buried in the snow both rise up and ascend to this place after death. That's where my sunflower longs to be.
“Ah! Sun-flower” Themes
Longing for the Divine
Blake's mysterious "Ah! Sun-flower" suggests that life itself is a state of longing. The poem’s image of a sunflower reaching towards the light and warmth of the sun evokes the human longing to be reunited with God in heaven. In this interpretation of the poem, life on earth is a journey back to God’s loving embrace.
The speaker presents a personified sunflower “seeking after that sweet golden clime”—that is, reaching for the lovely, peaceful warmth of the sun. This flower is "weary of time," however, perhaps because each day seems the same; it stretches and stretches towards the sun but can never reach it. It even "count[s] the steps of the Sun," suggesting that it takes note of the sun's passage into and out of the sky each day (almost like a prisoner chalking off each day of their sentence).
Readers likely get the sense that the speaker isn’t just talking about a flower here: that "sweet golden clime" sounds a lot like heaven, a similarity bolstered by the fact that the speaker calls it the place where "the travellers journey is done." The word “traveller” nods to the common metaphor of life as a journey, and the poem thus implies that this "golden" destination can only be reached in death (that is, at the end of life's journey).
Note, too, that the sunny, yellow flower resembles the sun that it follows; humanity is likewise created in God’s image and, the poem implies, thus naturally longs to be with God. And the poem’s second stanza presents this longing as so intense it sounds almost sexual.
Here, the speaker describes a young person who “pined away with desire” and a "pale Virgin shrouded” (that is, buried) “in snow." The image of this untouched virgin and desirous youth rising from their tombs suggests that life somehow isn’t consummated until people are with God again: the virgin in the “snow” is kept on ice waiting for her metaphorical bridegroom (God) while the youth “pined” forever until he died. Only after death can both finally go to that "sweet golden clime" the sunflower itself “wishes to go.”
The sun-following sunflower thus stands for people and their desire to go to their heavenly home, which is perhaps why the speaker describes it as "my sunflower." The speaker senses the same longing the sunflower feels to return to “that sweet golden clime” of heaven: a blissful eternity that has no place for the weariness of “time." Living beings, the poem suggests, come from God and go back to God, with the adventure of earthly life taking place in between these two points in eternity.
It's worth noting, though, that the poem can also be read as criticizing the denial of the joys of earthly life in anticipation of the return to heaven. Blake often expressed the belief that people should embrace their natural instincts rather than give in to the oppressive rules of organized religion. Both interpretations are valid: perhaps the poem is at once acknowledging the longed-for bliss of eternal heaven and pointing out how this desire might distract people from the brief but bright temporary pleasures of being alive.
윌리엄 블레이크
아, 해바라기여! 시간이 지겨워,
해의 발걸음을 하나씩 세며,
나그네의 여행이 끝나는
저 감미로운 황금의 나라를 찾는구나.
그곳은 욕망으로 파리한 젊은이와
눈처럼 하얀 옷을 입은 창백한 숫처녀가
무덤에서 일어나, 가기를 갈망하는,
내 해바라기가 가기를 원하는 곳이니.
윌리엄 블레이크의 이 시는 1794년 발간된 "경험의 노래" 에 수록되어 있다.
시는 짧고 간결하지만, 이 시에 담긴 의미와 상징을 해석하는 데 있어 비평가들은 다양한 의견을 내고 있다.
블레이크는 해바라기, 태양, 시간, 천국(황금의 나라), 젊은이, 숫처녀 등을 언급하고 있으며,
'해바라기' (Sun-flower)는 많은 의미로 해석될 수 있다.
영원한 사랑,
원죄의 인류로서 '타락한 인간',
잃어버린 순수함,
좌절된 사랑,
시적 상상력,
정신적 구원에 대한 갈망,
등을 상징하거나, 또는 이들이 복합된 다양한 이미지를 생각할 수 있다.
'젊은이' (the Youth)와 '창백한 숫처녀' (the pale Virgin)는 '순결한 순수성' 을 의미한다.
해바라기(클리티아)는 '타락한 인간' (fallen man)을 상징하며, 그녀도 영혼의 구원을 얻어, 이들 순결한 영혼들이 가기를 갈망하는 천국(황금의 나라)에 가기를 희망하고 있다.