“A Poison Tree’’ by William Blake
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“A poison Tree’’ is a poem by William Blake. The poem about anger and the consequences resulting from anger. The speaker talks of how failure to communicate about their foes have grown to become poisonous hatred.
Speaker in the poem
The speaker in the poem is the poet himself (William Blake), talking of how miscommunication between him and his enemy leads to poisonous hatred. “I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.” (Line 3-4)
Summary of the Poem
First stanza: the speaker remembers her anger encounters with friends and enemies. He told his friend about it, and they solved it. In contrast, he did not talk about the anger with his foe, causing it to increase.
Second stanza: The speaker talks of watering the hatred tree day and night with tears and faking it with smiles and deceitful wiles. (Line 7-8)
Third Stanza: The hatred tree grew both day and night and bore fruits. The enemy was watching the shining apples and knew the speaker owned them.
Fourth Stanza: The enemy sneaks into the speaker’s garden in the middle of the night. The speaker finds his enemy dead evoking happiness within him.
The Implication of the Poem
To analyze the implication of this poem, I used the heuristic method. The poem is a collection of symbolism that makes the heuristic approach applicable.
The poem symbolizes human emotions and their outcomes. It portrays major human emotions like anger and the results of being angered by someone. The tree growing and bearing fruits shows how the anger grows inside the persona to become large. “And it grew both day and night, till it bore an apple bright.” (Line 9-10)
The poem also uses an extended metaphor. The tree bearing a bright apple has been used metaphorically to show the consequences of the anger. After the anger growing so much, the grudge has caused the death of the enemy.
Form
The form of this poem is created through AABB rhyme. This rhyme scheme helps to make the poem musical and easy to recite.
Theme
The major theme of this poem is anger and its consequences. The poet digs deeper in human life to capture the darker side of the human mind. The poet demonstrates how hatred nourishes and become poisonous. Blake tries to explain how easy one can forgive a friend and not an enemy. He also demonstrates that even though one tries to hide, it will sprout out, causing major destructions. Like the death of the enemy.
Work cited
Blake, William. “A Poison Tree.” The Lancet, vol. 330, no. 8565, Oct. 2016, pp. 947–948, 10.1016/s0140-6736(87)91426-7. Accessed 21 Apr. 2020.