The Flower - Analysis

Introduction and overall impression

The Flower reads as a concise, fable-like poem with a wry, didactic tone that shifts between bemusement and quiet resignation. Tennyson presents a simple narrative of creation, rejection, appropriation, and commodification, moving from a personal act of planting to a public frenzy and back to ambivalence. The mood shifts from hopeful to persecuted to triumphant and finally to ironic commentary.

Relevant background

Written in the Victorian era by Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poem reflects a period when mass culture, industrialization, and the spread of ideas altered traditional ownership and value. Tennyson often used compact narratives and fables to comment on social change and human behavior.

Main theme: Creation and ownership

The narrator's planting of a seed and the later theft and widespread sowing dramatize tensions over who controls creative or natural gifts. Lines like "Stole the seed by night" and "Sow'd it far and wide" show transfer from private origin to public possession, suggesting that once a thing enters the world it is claimed, replicated, and reshaped by others.

Main theme: Popular taste and fickleness

The poem traces public opinion from scorn ("a weed") to praise ("Splendid is the flower") and back to dismissal, highlighting collective inconsistency. The repeated reversal—people calling it a weed, then lauding it, then again rejecting it—emphasizes how value is socially constructed and unstable.

Imagery and recurring symbol: the seed/flower

The seed and its resulting flower function as a central symbol for ideas, art, or innovations. The seed's journey—from solitary planting to being stolen and sown widely—encapsulates diffusion and transformation. The crown of light suggests original purity or excellence, while its later commercialization implies dilution. The closing ironic note, "Most can raise the flowers now," questions whether abundance undermines distinction.

Ambiguity and open question

The final stanza's ambivalence—some flowers "pretty enough" and some "poor indeed," with the people again calling it a weed—invites readers to ask whether democratization of beauty is gain or loss. Is the narrator mourning dilution, celebrating accessibility, or simply noting human inconsistency?

Conclusion

Tennyson's brief fable compresses complex observations about creativity, appropriation, and public taste into a neat parable. Through the seed/flower image and shifting public voice, the poem critiques how value is assigned and how original acts are transformed once they enter a communal sphere.