A POISON TREE FROM SONGS OF EXPERIENCE) BY WILLIAM BLAKE

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

WILLIAM BLAKE

1757 – 1827

"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 (reserved, introverted) feelings of anger towards an individual, emotions which eventually lead to murder. The poem explores themes of indignation (annoyance, fury), revenge, and more generally the fallen state of mankind.

The original title of the poem is "Christian Forbearance," and was placed as number 10 in the Rossetti manuscript, 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. 

Form / Structure / Versification 

The poem relies on a trochaic (Stressed + Unstressed) beat. It consists of four quatrain stanzas, and begins with an emphasis on the first person. The first person perspective (viewpoint) 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."

Summary of the Poem: The speaker is presenting two scenarios (situations) here:-

Scenario #1:

 In the first, he (we're assuming it's a he) is in a tiff (quarrel, argument, row) with his friend, a spat (fight) if you will. But wait! There's no need to fret (worry fuss). He told his friend about his anger and… guess what? His anger went away, the power of communication.

Scenario #2: We get the same basic set-up here. The speaker's mad again, but this time he's mad at his enemy. Will he follow the same route? He keeps mum (silent, quiet) about his anger for his enemy and, well, that anger just grows. The speaker's anger is only heightened by his fears, and his continued deception about his true feelings.

Then, in an odd (strange), metaphorical twist, the speaker's anger blossoms into an apple.  At least the speaker's enemy thinks so. One night, he sneaks (slips, creeps) into the speaker's garden (presumably for a delicious apple snack (bite)), but it doesn't work out so well for him. The next morning, the speaker is happy to see that his foe lying dead under the tree that bore the (apparently poison) apple. Not good.

A Poison Tree

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 and morning with my tears,

And I sunned it with smiles

And with soft deceitful wiles. (Tricks, deceit)

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright, (Allusion to Adam and Eve)

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. (Widely spread) 

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. 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.

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 (swallow, consume) part of the poisoner, as food, through reading, or other actions. Through ingestion, the poisoned sense of reason of the poisoner is forced onto the poisoned. Thus, the death of the poisoned can be interpreted (understand) as a replacement of the poisoned's individuality. 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.

The poem, like others in Songs of Experience, reflects individual Christian sense of alienation (hostility, isolation).  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 goodness 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 (development) 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."

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 Experience series. The actual tree, described as a tree of "Mystery," appears again in "The Human Abstract," and both trees are grown within the mind.