"A Poison Tree" is a poem written by William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his Songs of

Experience collection. It describes the narrator's repressed feelings of anger towards an individual,
emotions which eventually lead to murder. The poem explores themes of indignation, revenge, and
more generally the fallen state of mankind.

William Blake is somewhat rare among British poets: he was both a poet and a painter. Indeed, during
his lifetime he made ends meet with his talent for drawing, painting, and illustrating. Despite his
popularity now (he is considered to be one of the six major male Romantic poets of the early nineteenth
century), Blake was relatively unknown during his lifetime, except as a working-class engraver and
illustrator. Blake is also unique in that he combined his two artistic talents and produced a series of
what he called "Illuminated Books," books that featured his pictures and poetry on the same page! You
can read a very brief account of how Blake made these books here, and you can see some pictures of
what they look like over at "Best of the Web."
One of Blake's first illuminated books was called Songs of Innocence (it came out in 1789), which was
later combined with his Songs of Experiencein 1794. The full title of the volume in 1794 was Songs of
Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Now, as you might
have already guessed, the Songs of Innocence tend to bethough aren't alwaysmore innocent. They
feature lambs, children singing, and that sort of thing, whereas the Songs of Experience tend to be a bit
darker.
"A Poison Tree," as you've probably figured out by now, appears in Songs of Experience. It's a poem
about anger, revenge, and death (some of Blake's favorite themes), which contrast markedly with many
of the poems in the Songs of Innocence that feature, well, happier trees and more benign themes. In
this poem, Blake is really indulging and exploring his darker side, and the darker side of the human
condition by extension.

Theme:
"A Poison Tree" is a poem about anger, and, more importantly, some of the destructive consequences
that can result when we cultivate our anger, rather than try a more productive outlet for this potentially
dangerous emotion (like stamp collecting!). The fact that Blake refers to anger as "wrath" suggests that
the poem is about a more serious type of anger, a vengeful or spiteful feeling of biblical magnitude
("wrath" is commonly used in the Bible to refer to the anger of Old Testament God). In other words, this
is seriously powerful stuff that must be carefully guarded against.
Language and Communication:
In the first stanza of "A Poison Tree," the speaker says, "I told my wrath, my wrath did end" (2) and "I
told it not, my wrath did grow" (4). The poem suggests that talking about emotions is an important part
of dealing with them. It also suggests that not talking about our emotions, instead harboring and
cultivating them, will lead to poisonous "fruit"the poem's metaphor for the dire consequences of
anger that's not dealt with properly. Trust usthat is one bad apple. The good news is, though, that we
can avoid the speaker's grim fate. We've just got to get the bad stuff off our chest on a regular basis.
Lies and Deceit:
"A Poison Tree" is all about lies and deception. The speaker suns his anger with "soft deceitful wiles,"
and this anger eventually produces an apple that is deceptively bright and shiny (deceptively because
the apple turns out to be poisonous, not made of wax). The speaker isn't the only guilty party, however.
In the last stanza, the "foe" "steals" into the garden, presumably in order to steal the apple whose
bright, shiny peel must be irresistible. Anger isn't just anger all by itself, then. The poem suggests that
its good buddies lies and deceit also accompany it.

Background
The Songs of Experience was published in 1794 as a follow up to Blake's 1789 Songs of Innocence.
[1]
The two books were published together under the merged title Songs of Innocence and Experience,
showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: the author and printer, W. Blake [2] featuring 54
plates. The illustrations are arranged differently in some copies, while a number of poems were moved
from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake continued to print the work throughout his life.
[3]
Of the copies of the original collection, only 28 published during his life are known to exist, with an
additional 16 published posthumously.[4] Only 5 of the poems fromSongs of Experience appeared
individually before 1839 with[5] "A Poison Tree" first published in the 1830 London University Magazine.
[6]

The original title of the poem is "Christian Forbearance,"[7] and was placed as number 10 in the Rossetti
manuscript,[8] printed on a plate illustrated by a corpse under a barren tree. The body was shown in a
similar manner to the crucified corpse of Blake's "A Negro on the Rack" in John Gabriel
Stedman's Narrative.[9]

Poem

The poem relies on a trochaic beat. It consists of four stanzas, and begins with an emphasis on the first
person. The first person perspective changes with the use of the word "And" after the first stanza, while
the emphasis on "I" is replaced with "it" to emphasize the perspective of the "foe." [10]

The original draft has a line drawn beneath the first stanza, which could denote that Blake originally
intended the poem as concluding at the 4th line.[11] There are also many differences between the
manuscript and published versions of the poem, with the original line 3 and 4 reading "At a Friends
Errors Anger Shew / Mirth at the Errors of a Foe."[12]

Themes

The poem suggests that acting on anger reduces the need for vengeance, which may be connected to
the British view of anger held following the start of the French Revolution. The revolutionary forces were
commonly connected to the expression of anger with opposing sides arguing that the anger was either
a motivating rationale or simply blinded an individual to reason. [13] Blake, like Coleridge, believed that
anger needed to be expressed, but both were wary of the type of emotion that, rather than guide, was
able to seize control.[14]

Poisoning appears in many of Blake's poems. The poisoner of "A Poison Tree" is similar to Blake's
Jehovah, Urizen, Satan, and Newton. Through poisoning an individual, the victim ingests part of the
poisoner, as food, through reading, or other actions, as an inversion on the Eucharist. Through

ingestion, the poisoned sense of reason of the poisoner is forced onto the poisoned. Thus, the death of
the poisoned can be interpreted as a replacement of the poisoned's individuality. [15] The world of the
poem is one where dominance is key, and there is no reciprocal interaction between individuals
because of a lack of trust.[16]

The poem, like others in Songs of Experience, reflects a uniquely Christian sense of alienation.[17] As
such, "A Poison Tree" appears to play off the Christian idea of self-denial, and it is possible that Blake is
relying on Emanuel Swedenborg's theme of piety concealing malice, which ultimately alienates the
individual from their true identity and evil no longer appears to be evil. Blake's poem differs from
Swedenborg's theory by containing an uncontrollable progression through actions that lead to the
conclusion. The final murder is beyond the control of the narrator, and the poem reflects this by
switching from past to the present tense. The poem's theme of duplicity and the inevitable conclusion
is similar to the anonymous poem "There was a man of double deed." [18]

The image of the tree appears in many of Blake's poems, and seems connected to his concept of the
Fall of Man. It is possible to read the narrator as a divine figure who uses the tree to seduce mankind
into disgrace. This use of the fallen state can also be found in the poems "The Human Abstract" and
"London" from the Songs of Experienceseries.[19] The actual tree, described as a tree of "Mystery,"
appears again in "The Human Abstract," and both trees are grown within the mind. [20]