Poison_Tree_Analaysis

In 1794 William Blake was roughly 27 years of age when he wrote the well known poem ‘A poison tree’. ‘Poison tree’ is a perfect metaphor for human nature and anger as a tree grows slowly. This memorable poem tells the story of how anger with one’s friend can be resolved although anger with one’s enemy can only take a turn for the worse. This poem contains four stanza’s, stanza one shows the poet’s description of how a person was angry with his friend but decided to encounter his friend and then his ‘wrath did end’. The poet then describes how the same person was angry with his adversary but decided not to confront his foe and therefore his ‘wrath did grow’. The poet uses repetition of words like ‘angry’ to emphasise the difference between friend and foe. In stanza two the poet uses many metaphors which describe the growth of the poison tree which reflect growing hate. ‘And I watered it in fears’ shows how the speaker (the person whose point of view the poem was written from) explains the way in which he allowed his anger to build inside himself. By watering ‘it’ with fears he keeps adding to his misery, the ‘it’ in this line refers to his wrath. The next line ‘Night and morning with my tears’ again elaborates on the way he allowed his anger to flourish throughout the days. The poet then finishes the stanza by writing ‘And I sunned it with smiles, and with soft deceitful wiles’ meaning, he never revealed to his enemy that he was angry with him as he always bore a smile upon his face and therefore very sneakily he was luring his enemy into a trap. ‘Deceitful wiles’ meaning misleading sly tricks are used to lure his enemy into a sense of false security. The following stanza reads ‘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’, This stanza shows the way that his enemy is being leaded into a dangerous trap which may lead to disastrous results. The anger of the speaker is still developing until it has gotten so bad his wrath could not be any more deadly and therefore his anger is turned into a physical object. The speaker has made this deadly object appeal to his enemy and has tempted his enemy into wanting it. The final stanza ‘And into my garden stole, When the night had veiled the pole; In the morning glad I see, my foe outstretched beneath the tree. The first line suggests that the enemy sneakily entered his garden (property) by the word ‘stole’ and then the next line shows how the enemy carefully planned to come late at night so he was not spotted. Finally, the concluding two lines read ‘In the morning glad I see, my foe outstretched beneath the tree.’ This clearly shows the speaker was ecstatic to see how his plan had worked and the way that his enemy was dead. Although it says his enemy was ‘outstretched beneath the tree’ I think either the enemy had accidently been tricked and died or he was not actually dead but was just genuinely outstretched and had just realised that the speaker was not actually his friend but his newly found enemy. This poem follows an aabb rhyme structure.