The Rose

The Rose - meaning Summary

Mortality Shaded by Imagery

Cummings' short poem uses the rose as a mutable symbol of dying and loss. Imagery collapses beauty and violence, with an old man's mouth framed as an agent of destruction and petals falling into silence. Mourners move like a detached crowd while motion and stillness interweave, creating a compressed meditation on mortality, the persistence of grief, and how language and ritual fail to hold life’s fragile sweetness.