A POISON TREE BY WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake was born in 1757 and was originally an engraver. He began adding text to his engravings in the form of poems and he was interested as much in the presentation of poems as the poems themselves. In 1789 he published an illustrated set of poems called Songs of Innocence and in 1793 followed this with Songs of Experience (from which A Poison Tree comes). The following year, he combined these two sets of poems, publishing as Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
The first set of poems is, therefore, generally hopeful and positive while the second set tends to be more negative and pessimistic.
Blake was a deeply religious man and this shows in the moral nature of his work. His poetry was not really well-regarded during his own life. Today he is regarded as a man ahead of his time and he is now thought of as a major poetic writer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-x87gWZKd8

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 waterd it in fears,

Night & 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 veild the pole;

In the morning glad I see;

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGcQsciSp_I

Linda R. Ranieri

West Chester University

Explication of William Blake’s

"A Poison Tree" (1794)

William Blake’s "A Poison Tree" (1794) stands as one of his most intriguing poems, memorable for its vengeful feel and sinister act of deceit.  Blake wants to impart a moral lesson here, pointing of course to the experience we gain in our human existence at the cost of our innocence. With this poem, he suggests that holding a grudge (suppressed anger left unchecked) can be fatal to the self as well as the object of wrath. Through images, punctuation, and word choice, Blake warns that remaining silent about our anger only hinders personal and spiritual growth, making us bitter, and that a grudge left unchecked becomes dangerous, even murderous.

 Stanza 1 :

Blake comments on the need to confront a problem if peace and happiness are to prevail. When the speaker "tells" his wrath, it "ends," but when he "tells it not," his anger "grows." Like an apple seed falling onto fertile soil, the speaker’s repressed anger germinates and becomes the one obsession in his life. In the first couplet, Blake conveys the image of a plant being uprooted, nipping in the bud (as it were) a misunderstanding between the speaker and his friend. In sharp contrast, the speaker holds back from admitting anger to his foe in the following couplet, allowing it to fester within. With simple language, Blake neatly establishes the root of the poem, ending this first stanza with the foreshadowing "grow" (4).

Stanza 2:

It depicts the speaker’s treatment and nurturing behavior towards his internalized wrath, as he tends to it like a beloved plant; here, Blake stresses the "wrath = plant" metaphor that is inherent to the poem. His anger becomes a living entity that he "waters" and "suns" with "tears" and "wiles," and making it to grow "both night and day" (9), hinting at his unfolding scheme against his foe. In describing his attentive care towards this wrath/plant, the speaker unintentionally reveals his unnatural obsession with getting revenge, while pointing to the slowly emerging anger as a force of its own that slowly consumes the speaker.

Stanza 3:

The speaker’s vigilance results in "an apple bright" (10) in the third stanza – similar to the apple from the Tree of Forbidden Knowledge, this fruit stands at once as a harbinger of danger and a tantalizing temptation for the speaker’s unsuspecting foe. The speaker becomes the Serpent that tempted Eve, capitalizing on and exploiting the Deadly Sin of Envy by allowing his foe to "behold its shine" (11). The crafty speaker brags about reading his foe’s mind: "And my foe beheld it shine, / and he knew that it was mine" (11-12), implying the ease with which he could fool his enemy by taking advantage of his foe’s natural curiosity and covetousness. Blake ends this stanza with a comma instead of a period, accelerating the fatal line of action into the fourth and final stanza, filling the reader with dread and anticipation.

The foe falls for the ruse, deceptive in his own right as he stealthily slips into the speaker’s garden to steal the shiny object (and proving the speaker’s suspicions right). Blake combines the acts of breaking and entering and of theft into the word "stole" at the end of Line 13 (an ironic line choice, too, if one is superstitious), with no ending punctuation that would let the reader hesitate or stop for a breath.

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:

(Lines 11-14)

Stanza 4:

When taken together, these four lines powerfully sweep the reader into the poem’s climax. Under veil of night, envy and curiosity get the better of the foe – as the speaker foresaw – sneaking into the garden as darkness envelopes the "pole" or tree, implying that whatever the foe’s intentions, they will remain unknown. The reader waits with anticipation and dread for the final blow, knowing what will come yet wanting to see how ends. Blake further adds to the drama by ending Line 14 with a colon, setting up the reader for what s/he thinks will be the poem’s most powerful image.

Yet the reader does not learn what happens to the foe. The final image conveyed in the last couplet is of the foe lying "outstretched beneath the tree" (16), breaking the poem’s flow of action by flashing forward to the following morning. With the dawn comes the poem’s resolution: the speaker is "glad [to] see" his foe dead, apparently from ingesting the poison apple. The speaker seems satisfied that his scheme of deception has worked, getting rid of his source of wrath by poisoning it with his unchecked anger and desire for revenge.

But why does Blake omit the murder scene from the story? Perhaps he wants to emphasize the murderous means the speaker has taken to avenge himself of his enemy. More accurately, Blake reflects the speaker’s frame of mind in this omission: as he wants to kill his enemy, he also wishes to kill his conscience, blotting out the act of murder as he blots out the source of his irrational anger. The speaker realizes he is morally wrong, but gets so caught up in the moment and the seeming brilliance of his scheme that cannot stop himself from seeing it through. Unchecked anger drives the speaker to commit this murderous act, anger he cannot or refuses to acknowledge from the start of the poem. The mortal sin of murder will forever stain his hands – he cannot go on with living unless he suppresses the event, as he did his wrath.

"A Poison Tree" is a  confession without actually naming or describing the crime itself. The speaker takes the time to brag about how he implemented his plan, without admitting his crime. Thus this poem’s impact lies in the dangers that can arise from allowing one’s anger to grow unchecked and take over our minds, hearts, and souls, like a wild plant in the garden of our experience.

Summary

This meditation on the nature of wrath offers two ways of dealing with on an offence. When the speaker is angry with his friend, he told the friend of it and his “wrath did end.” However, when he was angry with his enemy, he kept the anger hidden, allowing it to grow. His wrath, which is watered “in fears” and sunned ‘with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles,” grows into the poison tree of the title. The tree bears “an apple bright” that the speaker’s enemy desires; the greedy enemy takes the fruit, even though he knows it belongs to the speaker, and eats it. 

The next morning the speaker is glad to see his “foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zgknv4j/revision/1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zgknv4j/revision/2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zgknv4j/revision/3

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zgknv4j/revision/4

                 

A helping hand:
1. wrath
belligerence aroused by a real or supposed wrong
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
2. foe
a personal enemy
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
3. deceitful
marked by deliberate deceptiveness
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
4. wile
the use of tricks to deceive someone
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
5. bear
bring forth
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
6. behold
see with attention
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine.
7. steal
move stealthily
And into my garden stole
8. veil
to obscure or conceal
When the night had veiled the pole
9. pole
one of two points of intersection of the Earth's axis and the celestial sphere
When the night had veiled the pole
10. outstretched
fully extended especially in length
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.