Hello and welcome to the Discourse. A Poison Tree is a powerful poem by William Blake, included in his "Songs of Experience" collection, published in 1794. The poem explores anger, resentment, and the destructive nature of unexpressed emotions. The speaker of the poem discusses two different approaches to anger. In the first part, openly discussing anger is depicted as a means to overcome it.
In contrast, the second part highlights the risks associated with suppressing anger. The poem employs an extended metaphor, portraying the speaker's anger as a tree that grows and produces poisonous apples. When the speaker's adversary consumes one of these apples, it leads to their demise. Overall, the poem is often seen as an allegory illustrating the perils of bottling up emotions, demonstrating how this behavior can create a cycle of negativity and potentially lead to violence.
The original title of the poem was supposed to be ‘Christian Forbearance’ which suggests that it is a religious theme. The poem serves as a critique of the Church's approach to emotional expression. The poet suggests that this ‘Christian Forbearance,’ that is, the suppression of anger, only brings destruction.
Structure of A Poison Tree:
The poem consists of four quatrains, following a consistent AABB rhyme scheme that adds to its nursery rhyme-like lyrical quality. A Poison Tree is generally regarded as a ballad. Each quatrain contains two rhyming couplets. However, one may divide the entire poem in two parts, the first is the opening couplet while the second part of the poem consists of the remaining fourteen lines. In the opening couplet, the speaker simply expresses his anger and while doing so, simply puts an end to it. In the second part, the speaker discusses how anger grows when it is suppressed. This second part includes the extended metaphor of a poison tree. Vivid imagery is employed to depict the growth of the "poison tree," emphasizing the natural progression of unchecked emotions. Blake used alternating Trochaic Trimeter followed by Iambic Trimeter in the poem. Thus, odd-numbered lines (1,3,5..) are in trochaic trimeter, while the even-numbered lines (2,4,6…) are in iambic trimeter.
While the first three stanzas are presented in the past tense, the poet uses the change of tense in the final stanza moving from past to present. Blake used Anaphora, Enjambment, Sibilance, Imagery, Allusion, Symbolism, Personification, Irony, Contrast, and Extended Metaphor in the poem.
Summary of A Poison Tree:
Stanza 1 Lines 1-4
“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 opening two lines presents the first scenario where the speaker suggests what happened when he was angry with a friend. He discussed it and expressed, and that calmed it, his ‘wrath did end’. Even though he was hurt and he knew that his friend did injustice to him, he tried his best to forget the past and end the feeling of vengeance in his heart. The speaker was angry with his friend, someone with whom the speaker is familiar and, ostensibly, already likes. This may suggest that friendship is necessary for free expression and open communication.
However, the next two lines present the other scenario and the beginning of the second part of the poem. The speaker says that he was angry with an enemy, someone whom he didn’t consider his friend. He wasn’t able to communicate his anger, and he had to suppress it. Thus, it wasn’t resolved.
While we can trust our friends with our true feelings and be honest with them, a foe is someone who – almost by definition – we cannot be so honest with.
This also means that being honest and open is a prerequisite of developing friendship. The very act of the speaker revealing his anger can be seen as making the other person a friend. He chose one, but remained aloof to the other, whom he considered a foe. The two different people could be totally strangers to the speaker. To whom he expressed, became his friend, and to whom, he failed to express and was forced to hide his true feelings, anger, became his foe.
‘Angry’ is the only disyllabic word in the first stanza while all others are monosyllabic, and it is the only word that has been repeated. draws attention to the concept of anger, introducing it as a key theme within the poem. Blake used binary opposites ‘friend’ and ‘foe’ in the first and third lines, “friend” and “foe”are the antithesis of each other and so are “end”and “grow”. The two different approaches to Anger suggest Contrast.
Stanza 2 Lines 5-8
“And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.”
The poet continues to expand the second scenario. While he suppressed his anger, it remained in his heart, and he continued to nurture the hatred with his fears, spending hours together, crying for the ill that has been caused to him by his enemy. Blake introduces his extended metaphor in this stanza, likening his anger to a tree that he ‘watered’ with fear and resentment. He confesses that he nurtured his anger with his sarcastic smiles, imagining ill and cursing his enemy to go through the same or worse sufferings that he has been through. These sarcastic ‘false’ smiles acted like sunlight helping a tree to grow: by bottling up his anger he made it worse, and by putting on ‘soft deceitful wiles’ (i.e. tricks and cover-ups to hide his true feelings), his anger continued to grow and morphed into something more devious: the need for vengeance.
The speaker confesses his double-facedness, He is smiling at his enemy while all the while he is (inwardly and secretly) plotting his revenge. He did so because he wished to suppress and hide his anger, not to reveal it, and appear friendly to a foe. The intended meaning is that suppressed anger and hatred start to eat away at oneself: hatred always turns inward, corrupting into self-hatred.
While the speaker secretly wished to hurt his foe, and take revenge, he was self-harming. In the final line, the poet claims that the shady strategies (hiding anger) caused the tree to grow in his head. The stanza began with ‘And’ which suggests “Anaphora.’
Stanza 3 Lines 9-12
“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 speaker continues with the extended metaphor and says that the tree continued to develop day and night until it became a fully grown tree with a bright apple. Here, "Bright Apple" illustrates something that invites his enemy to try it. However, misleading tricks like lying and hatred caused this dazzling apple to mature and become a threat to the enemy. The poet used Allusion in this stanza, the bright apple alludes to the fruit of Tree of Knowledge that was forbidden by God in the Garden of Eden.
That dazzling apple was a trap employed by the speaker to have his vengeance against his foe. The bright apple, did attract the foe. However, like the speaker, his foe too was not able to express his own feelings. So, he didn’t try to approach the speaker openly and ask about the dazzling ‘bright apple.’
Stanza 4 Lines 13-16
“And into my garden stole.
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.”
Since the foe of the speaker was unable to express and demand truth about the ‘bright apple’ directly from the speaker, he decided to enter the garden secretly, he got trapped. One night, he sneaked into the speaker’s garden and ate the apple from this tree.
The speaker turns to present tense as he visits his garden in the morning. There he is; his enemy, dead under the tree of his hatred. He bit the poisoned apple of his vengeance. He is murdered.
The suggestion is that since the speaker was unable to express and vent out his anger, it harmed and corrupted both, his foe and himself. The speaker and his foe are deluded: the speaker because he seems unaware that he has diminished himself by his actions, and the foe because he little realized that the apple he stole was poisoned.
The tree symbolizes the internalization of anger, while the apples represent the consequences of that anger when it is finally released or acted upon.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the History of English Literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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