To start off, the background for this poem is set in England in 1794, a time when one of the jobs a woman could get was one within prostitution. The overall idea of the poem is the spread of syphilis from a man who had sex with a prostitute then had sex with his wife who happens to be a pregnant. The syphilis is then spread to the child causing severe defects and ultimately death. The Rose is a metaphor for love. A love that is in some way sick and malfunctioning. The invisible worm refers to some type of bacteria or virus, which if looked at under a microscope would look like a worm, and because it is too small, it would be seen as invisible. That invisible worm would be syphilis, which happened to be very common during that time. "That flies in the nigh" means that it is spreading in the night in a howling storm, referring to the howling of pleasure, or sex. This refer to the man fornicating with the prostitute and then his wife. "And dark secret love which thy life destroys" the life destroyed referred in this line is the life of the unborn child that was lost because of the syphilis.
- (hartmut133r)
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