Thoughts on "A Poison Tree" (William Blake)

   These are my thoughts on William Blake's "A Poison Tree."

   "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 water'd 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 veil'd the pole; 

   In the morning glad I see; 

   My foe outstretched beneath the tree.​

The speaker uses the word anger twice in the first stanza, and uses the word wrath, a stronger synonym for anger. In the first stanza, he is angry with his friend and with his enemy, but he tells his friend about the anger and the anger subsides. In contrast, the speaker does not talk to his enemy about his anger, and his anger increases. Blake writes of the speaker's anger with his friend, "I told my wrath, my wrath did end," but that of his foe, "I told it not, my wrath did grow." The speaker then uses the rest of the poem to discuss the consequences of remaining angry with his enemy. The speaker seems to nurture the anger in his fear and sadness (or anger) by the words "water'd it in fears, Night and morning with my tears;" but also in his "smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles." These smiles and deceitful wiles could be smiles to himself, to his foe, or to another person. The anger grows further. In the third stanza, the speaker says that "it grew both day and night Till it bore an apple bright." Then, in the fourth stanza, his anger comes to a conclusion when the speaker is glad at his enemy's demise. The speaker says, "In the morning glad I see/My foe outstretched beneath the tree."

Blake communicates the consequence of retaining your anger at an enemy: the anger grows until the enemy can see it, and can lead to your enemy's demise, with you satisfied at the outcome. Blake does not state directly that the speaker killed the enemy, but it is clear that the speaker is happy that the enemy is dead: "In the morning glad I see/My foe outstretched beneath the tree." The garden must be the same source of his anger, because he describes the anger as bearing an apple, a fruit you would find inside a garden. The enemy is in the place of the speaker's anger. Whether that means the enemy is actually dead, or only dead in the mind of the speaker is unclear, but either way, the anger leads to satisfaction at a horrible end for his enemy. In stanza one, the speaker begins by speaking of a withholding of his anger: he does not say to his enemy that he is angry. In stanza two, he coaxes the anger, perhaps as a result of not telling his enemy that he is angry (in contrast to his telling his friend that he was angry and seeing his anger end). In stanza three, the anger grows into an apple, which the enemy sees. In this stanza, then, Blake shows that anger can become visible as something attractive to one's enemy: the "apple bright." Finally, in stanza four, the speaker implies that the enemy ate this apple and died as a result. The speaker is angry, but does not tell his enemy that he is angry (stanza 1), nurtures the anger as a result (stanza 2), watches his anger grow into something that seems beautiful in appearance (stanza 3), and sees the consequences of that deception with his enemy's death (stanza 4).

There is an allusion, too, to the Garden of Eden here. Just as the speaker nurtures his anger with "soft deceitful wiles," so Satan nurtured the sin in Adam and Eve with his deceit about God's words. Just as the fruit in the garden (often thought of as an apple, though not necessarily an apple) represented sin and seemed "good to eat" to Adam and Eve, so the speaker's sin looked attractive to his enemy. Finally, just as Adam and Even dies as a result of eating the fruit from the forbidden tree, so the speaker's enemy dies from eating the apple.

​The poem reveals that the foe is still in contact with (or at least still thinking about) the speaker. The speaker says that the foe "knew that it was mine." The "it" in the poem is the apple. We also know that the foe seems to have died as a result of indulging the anger: "And into my garden stole/When the night had veil'd the pole/In the morning glad I see/My foe outstretched beneath the tree." The is susceptible to temptation. He also acts secretly, not going to the speaker directly, but secretly "entering" the speaker's garden and indulging the anger of the speaker, then dying. We do not know who the enemy is, or whether the enemy is in the right or in the wrong. The enemy may not have done anything wrong. We also do not know whether the speaker's gender or age.

In the end, this poem reveals anger--or all sin--as something specific to one man, but something that all men experience. Too, the consequences of that anger or sin, Blake shows, affect not only us, but those against whom we use it.