A Poison Tree

Analysis A Poison Tree by William Blake depicts a process of how someone takes revenge on their foes. The author is angry at an enemy and he describes what he has done to lure his enemy into his grave. Blakes poem uses many metaphorical phrases to test the readers perception of the actual meaning. This analysis discusses the theme, literary devices and context of this piece.

The subject matter of the piece is death. Blake highlights the process of planning his enemys death. The poison tree represents the evil seed that the author has planted, in order to seek revenge against his enemy. In the first verse, Blake has written: 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. This is used to refer to people classifying other people as two different classes and in this case, friend and foe.

The theme of the poem is not anger itself but the suppression of anger. Blake describe how bottling up anger can lead to extreme consequences. According to the poem, the seed of anger is fertilized by the energy of the anger, resulting into a destructive force. Blake uses two or more rhyming couplets in the poem, to give off a hint of childishness. The author wrote A Poison Tree in ways that make it sound like a simple poem, however, this is a poem of vengeance and death.

Blake uses metaphor for the whole poem as every line could have another meaning, or a direct meaning itself. And I watered it in fears, Night and morning with my tears; And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles. Blake represented anger with a plant and also compared his anger to the gardeners anger towards the seed. The Poison Tree could also represent the Tree of Knowledge in the Holy Bibles Old Testament, under Genesis. Blake has also used allusion to describe the fruit of the angers tree to the Tree of Knowledge.

A Poison Tree was written in the eighteenth century, depicted from words such as soft deceitful wiles. Blakes ideology of the poem could be seen that he was influenced a lot on Sweden borgianism, which means that the spiritual world has a connection with the natural world. It was taught that God was a god of wrath and judgment and was focused more on sin. Blake has rejected that ideology partially but not entirely.

A Poison Tree