An Asphodel
An Asphodel - meaning Summary
Longing Amid Ordinary Flesh
The poem presents a speaker fixated on an unreachable desire framed by the image of the asphodel. It contrasts idealized, botanical language with quotidian, vulnerable scenes—nakedness, drunken dreaming, absence of electricity—to show how erotic longing and mundane reality coexist. Repetition of eating the asphodel suggests a resigned appetite for fate. The tone mixes wistfulness and bodily immediacy, allowing desire to feel both tragic and ordinary.
Read Complete AnalysesO dear sweet rosy unattainable desire ...how sad, no way to change the mad cultivated asphodel, the visible reality... and skin's appalling petals--how inspired to be so Iying in the living room drunk naked and dreaming, in the absence of electricity... over and over eating the low root of the asphodel, gray fate... rolling in generation on the flowery couch as on a bank in Arden-- my only rose tonite's the treat of my own nudity.
the funniest version of this being read is by Mr Roger Taylor on YouTube, xx