A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect, as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow….
The above is an excerpt from The Picture of Dorian Gray. I am not understanding the meaning of the phrase "the meanest flower might blow".
Best Answer
Meanest: Lowliest
Blow: What it says - unless it is an archaic version of "bloom" as suggested in another answer. I'll let the rest of my post stay for reference.
Quote is from Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth
Explanation from The great Gilly Hopkins