A POISON TREE

WILLIAM BLAKE
 *SUMMARY*
The author was angry with a friend, revealed it, and the
anger was dispelled. However, anger toward an enemy was
not revealed, but nurtured with fears and negative feelings
about the ‘foe'.

The author’s growing antipathy was masked by smiles and

pretence. It grew into a tree bearing a shiny apple which
was desired by the enemy.

His foe, therefore, crept into the speaker's garden on a

starless night and took the apple, resulting in the enemy's
corpse being found the next morning lying beneath the tree.
 *POEM*
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 watered it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
 *POEM*
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 veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the
tree.
 *COMMENTARY*

This poem presents another aspect of the tree

growing in the human mind that is found in
The Human Abstract.
It shows what happens when human energies
are labelled ‘bad' and suppressed.
 *COMMENTARY*
In the first stanza, author comments on the need to
confront anger. He believed that ‘opposition is true
friendship' because it is through conflict that people grow
and learn. So when the poem's speaker openly confronts
the friend who has aroused his anger, the matter is resolved.
Conventional social behaviour might condemn such
confrontation – it was deemed better to ‘swallow your
anger'.
However, repressing the speaker's anger towards an enemy
means that it germinates and becomes an obsession, like an
apple seed falling onto fertile soil.
 *COMMENTARY*
Author stresses the ‘wrath' / ‘plant' metaphor here.
The author's deception produces fruit that seems
attractive to his enemy. It is as though the smiles and
wiles have created attractive ‘bait' which the foe now
desires for him/herself.

The apple has attracted the selfish, covetous love of

the speaker's enemy, just as the fruit from the Tree
of Knowledge of Good and Evil attracted the
covetous desire of Eve.
 *COMMENTARY*
The foe dies after eating the apple because it represented the
speaker's deceptive affection, but was actually the fruit of anger
and hatred.
Author's point is that the enemy has been seduced by a socially
acceptable outward appearance, which conceals a poisonous and
death-dealing relationship.

The enemy, too, is deceitful. He steals the fruit, motivated by his

own covetousness, knowing that the apple belonged to another
and its loss would be felt. For author, it was the repression of
instinctive desires, so that they became distorted and ‘poisonous',
that was at fault, rather than having those desires in the first place.
 *MORAL LESSONS*

 We must be cautious of the motives of other people

 Do not manipulate others, especially innocent people
 Have open communication in life
 Do not nurture hatred because it is destructive
 Anger management is important in life
 We should make friends with anybody and everybody
 Make peace, not war
THE END