Ah! Sunflower

"Ah! Sun-flower" is an illustrated poem written by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794 (no.43 in the sequence of the combined book, Songs of Innocence and of Experience). It is one of only four poems in Songs of Experience not found in the "Notebook" (the Rossetti MS).

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 poem consists of eight lines, in two quatrains.

The metre is largely one of anapaestic trimeter with an admix of initial iambs and trochees to break up the rather monotonous rhythm that the anapaestic line confers. Thus Blake is able to show the cyclical monotony that the protagonists are suffering, while at the same time giving a forward note of impetus and hope to the movement of the lines.

The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd; all the rhymes are masculine.

The ambiguous use of the word "Ah," (a note of delight, surprise, pity?) and the repetition of the word "where" are noteworthy - these are discussed by Grant; the disturbance of the anapaestic rhythm in line three by Edwards.

"The speaker begins with a sigh that suggests the same weariness that he attributes to the Sunflower (a suggestion emphasized by the heavy stresses in the song). The wistful tone and the implied sympathy for the time-bound victims are disarming. But, as many critics have noted, the poem is not without irony...the sense of timeless rest is soon complicated by the ambiguous syntax." Indeed, Bloom goes so far as to say that "the lyric's tone can be characterized as a kind of apocalyptic sardonicism."

The printmaking technique used for the whole page is relief etching, with pen and watercolour, touched with gold.

The dimensions of the printed impression, including all three poems (see illustration), are: 14 cm x 9.4 cm (based on the King's College, Cambridge, copy - copy "W").(See the external link at the bottom of this page for a comparison, provided by the William Blake Archive, of 13 versions of the design. Size and colouring varies across the different copies).

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