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In his own words

The Sick Rose

O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm,That flies in the night, In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy,And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

Eight lines, one image, no explanation. Whatever the invisible worm is in your life, the poem already knows about it.

The poems are in the public domain. The texts here follow Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook 574, reproduced verbatim, punctuation included. That late 19th century text keeps the famous Tyger spelling while smoothing some others, so a few lines read slightly differently than in Blake's original etched plates. Songs of Innocence first appeared in 1789, Songs of Experience in 1794, combined by Blake into one book whose title page promises to show the two contrary states of the human soul. The introductions and groupings are ours.