A Poison Tree Poem by William Blake

Kakatiya University Warangal-

 Degree General English- 

    Semester 1-unit 3

A Poison Tree

 William Blake

 I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears, 
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,--

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

About the author

William Blake (1757–1827) was born in England. He belonged to the Romantic period. He was a painter, printmaker, and poet. He is well known for his lyrical poems, "Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience." Blake remained very close to his mother and wrote a lot of poetry about her. Poems such as Cradle Song illustrate Blake’s fond memories of his upbringing by his mother. 

About the poem

 The poem has 4 stanzas with ABAB rhyme scheme, and each stanza has a quatrain i.e. four lines. The poem was published in his collection of Songs Of Experience in the year 1794. The poem is in the first person. The poet is the speaker in the poem. In first stanza the last word of line 1 'friend' rhymes with 'end' in the second line. (AA). In the same way third- and fourth-line end with ‘foe’ and ‘grow’ (BB) that make perfect rhyming (AABB).  Anger and revenge are the major themes of the poem. The poem presents the dangers of suppressing, or nurturing anger. The speaker speaks about how his nourished wrath leads to death of his foe. Failing to communicate our wrath makes a man poisonous. 

The speaker gives two different situations in which he shows anger. In the first two lines,

             "I was angry with my friend:

               I told my wrath, my wrath did end".

He was angry with his friend, but the anger soon calmed down when he told him about his wrath. "I was angry with my foe; I told it not; my wrath did grow."  However, when he felt anger towards his enemy, he refrained from expressing it and remained silent. The speaker communicated his anger with his friend properly, so his anger calmed down. By keeping or nourishing extreme anger within himself, it grew more. Tree symbolises his wrath and anger, whereas, “garden” is the symbol of the heart, where hatred is nurtured.

The poet uses extended metaphor to describe the speaker's anger as a growing tree. The anger grew like a tree, day by day. He watered that tree/anger in his garden/mind, thinking and crying about his enemy day and night. The speaker cultivated the tree/anger. He also nurtured false satiric smiles. The tree bore a poisonous, bright apple fruit. The apple's shine serves to lure the enemy. Even with the knowledge that it is the speaker's property, the enemy steals it from his garden. In Genesis, the apple is the forbidden fruit. Eve was tempted by the apple, despite the divine warning against it.

At night, the enemy crept stealthily into his garden to steal it. The next morning, the speaker is happy to see his enemy lying dead under the tree. His enemy died eating the poisonous fruit.

The poet asserts that suppressing or holding our anger only intensifies it. If we speak about or discuss our anger with another person, we can overcome it easily. .

Glossary

Wrath- extreme anger

Foe- enemy

watered it in fears- figurative language which suggests the poet kept his anger alive by thinking about his fears.

Deceitful- deceiving

Annotation from the poem