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.
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The Full Text of “Ah! Sun-flower”
1Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
2Who countest the steps of the Sun:
3Seeking after that sweet golden clime
4Where the travellers journey is done.
5Where the Youth pined away with desire,
6And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
7Arise from their graves and aspire,
8Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
The Full Text of “Ah! Sun-flower”
1Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
2Who countest the steps of the Sun:
3Seeking after that sweet golden clime
4Where the travellers journey is done.
5Where the Youth pined away with desire,
6And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
7Arise from their graves and aspire,
8Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
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“Ah! Sun-flower” Summary
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“Ah! Sun-flower” Themes
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Longing for the Divine
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Ah! Sun-flower”
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Lines 1-2
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun: -
Lines 3-4
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done. -
Lines 5-6
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: -
Lines 7-8
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
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“Ah! Sun-flower” Symbols
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The Sunflower
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The Sun
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“Ah! Sun-flower” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
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Apostrophe
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Assonance
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Metaphor
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Personification
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Repetition
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Sibilance
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“Ah! Sun-flower” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Weary
- Countest
- Clime
- Pined Away
- Shrouded
- Arise
- Aspire
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Ah! Sun-flower”
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Form
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Meter
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Rhyme Scheme
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“Ah! Sun-flower” Speaker
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“Ah! Sun-flower” Setting
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Literary and Historical Context of “Ah! Sun-flower”
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More “Ah! Sun-flower” Resources
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External Resources
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Songs of Innocence and Experience — Visit the Blake Archive to see this collection as Blake originally published it: as a beautiful, illuminated manuscript.
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"Ah! Sun-flower!" Engraving — Check out the poem in its original layout and with its accompanying artwork.
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Blake's Biography — Learn more about Blake's life and work at the website of the British Library.
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Blake's Visions — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's religious visions.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Blake
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