A  Poison Tree  Structure

A Poison Tree by William Blake has four different stanzas. It starts as a first person poem, where
the poet is expressing his anger and hatred towards his enemy. The poem then takes a turn and ‘I’
is replaced with the word ‘It’, a pronoun to depict the feelings of the enemy.

A  Poison Tree  Poetic Form

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.
The poet is not only expressing his anger towards his friend as well as his foe (enemy)in this
stanza, but he has also depicted the difference between two types of anger. He states that when
you are angry with a friend, you convince your heart to forgive him. Even though you are hurt and
you know that he did injustice to you, you try your best to forget the past and end the feeling of
vengeance in your heart.

On the other hand, when you are angry with an enemy, it takes ages for you to calm your anger.
Yet, the anger and the feeling of vengeance do not diminish, even with time. In fact, the
vengeance simply grows.

And I watered it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
The poet is making a confession in this stanza of A Poison Tree – it is he, who is solely
responsible for the hatred that has grown in his heart for his enemy. It is he, who has increased
the vengeance in his heart. He has nurtured the hatred with his fears, spending hours together,
crying for the ill that has been caused to him by his enemy.

He has also nurtured the hatred with his sarcastic smiles, imagining ill and cursing his enemy to
go through the same or worse sufferings that he has been through.

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.
The poet states that it is because of his dwelling in the same hatred, that it has grown every day.
The hatred gave birth to an apple. The fruit signifies the evil that has taken birth in the heart of the
poet. He states that he has now come to a point from where he can’t turn back and forget about
his enemy, until he does something to soothe his vengeance.

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Finally, the day comes when the poet’s enemy has met the evil fruit of vengeance, that he has
grown with his fears, tears and sarcasm. The fruit has now turned into a weapon. When the
enemy confronts with this anger, it is time for the weapon to serve the purpose that it has been
made for.

And into my garden stole.

When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see,
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
And, so the poet states, the very next morning, the purpose is served. When the poet wakes up
and glimpses in the garden, he sees something that relaxes his mind and calms his vengeance
forever. The darkness of the night acted like an invisible cloak for the poet. Now, it is a beautiful
morning.

There he is; his enemy, dead under the tree of his hatred. He bit the poisoned apple of his
vengeance. He is murdered.

Metaphor-A growing apple tree is an extended metaphor for the growing anger and it shows
how destructive anger can be. The title “A Poison Tree” is the central metaphor. The apple
has become poisonous as it has been nurtured with anger. In other words, the tree
grew with negative emotions. When we stay angry for a long time, we may become
“A Poison Tree” (a person full of negative emotions).

 Setting-The persona’s garden. The garden where the apple tree grows. The apple tree that
features the apple which lures the enemy.

Symbolism-The apple represents anger. The apple grows large till it ripens. Similarly,
anger grows till it becomes vengeance.

Themes:

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Managing Anger:  It is not totally wrong to be angry. However, it is rather important for us
to know how to deal with anger. If we nurture our anger, it might grow and be harmful to
us. In this poem, two ways of handling anger were shown with different outcomes. In
the first scenario, the anger disappeared but in the second the anger grew into
something aggressive and negative.

 Importance of Communication:  As shown in the poem, if the persona had communicated
with his enemy, his anger would have been controlled. However, his refusal to communicate
has allowed anger to become something that is very destructive. Therefore it is often better
if we can communicate with people on the issues that is bugging us. The poet
indirectly is trying to persuade his readers to talk about their anger. We can talk about it not
only with our friends but with our enemies too. If we talk, the anger might just reduce and it
might just ease our troubles. In turn, it will prevent us from causing hurt unto others.

 Moral Value

The poem tells us about the disastrous consequences of one’s own failure to

communicate with another person.

What is the poem about:

"A Poison Tree" examines the effects of unresolved anger. 

In the poem, the narrator or persona first gets angry at a friend. He talks to his friend and
that dialogue resolves his problem so that he can forgive his friend. 

Then he grows angry at an enemy. Rather than communicate with his enemy and hash the
problem out, he holds the anger inside. 

As the poem puts it, he "waters" the anger with his tears, and then "suns" it with the false
smiles he offers his enemy. 

Eventually, this anger grows and grows until it becomes a tree that bears a shiny, poisonous
apple. The enemy eats the apple and dies.

Our personal connection to poem:

The poet means for us to see ourselves in the persona who nurtured his anger at his enemy
by watering it with his "tears" and sunning it with his deceitful "smiles." If we stuff down our
anger, pretend we're happy, and don't resolve our conflicts, our anger will grow and grow
until it becomes like a poisonous plant that will hurt other people. The poet shows us a
different and healthier path in the first stanza, where the persona confronts the friend who
makes him angry and works out the problem. The poem suggests that we have a choice

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about how we behave and that resolving our issues with others is far better than letting
them fester.

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