A Poison Tree
"A Poison Tree" is a four-stanza poem written by the English poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake and first published in 1794 as part of his collection Songs of Experience.[1][2] The work employs simple diction, an ABCB rhyme scheme, and vivid imagery to contrast the resolution of anger expressed openly to a friend with the destructive growth of wrath concealed from a foe, which blossoms into a metaphorical poison tree bearing alluring yet fatal fruit that kills the enemy in his sleep.[1][3] Blake's illuminated printing technique integrates hand-colored etchings with the text, enhancing the poem's symbolic depiction of emotional repression and deception.[4] The poem forms a thematic counterpoint to "A Poison Tree" in Blake's broader Songs of Innocence and of Experience, illustrating the corruption of natural innocence through societal constraints on honest emotion, a recurring motif in his critique of rationalism and institutional hypocrisy.[3] Its enduring literary significance lies in exploring the psychology of suppressed indignation, which Blake portrays as nurturing hypocrisy and vengeance rather than genuine moral growth, influencing interpretations of human fallenness akin to biblical narratives of sin and temptation.[5][6] Though not mired in overt controversies, the poem's unflinching examination of deceitful wrath has prompted scholarly debate on Blake's radical views, prioritizing unfiltered human passions over polite restraint.[2]Historical and Biographical Context
William Blake's Life and Philosophical Influences
William Blake was born on November 28, 1757, in London to James Blake, a hosier of moderate means, and Catherine Wright Blake, within a family holding strong nonconformist religious views that shaped his early worldview.[7] [8] Lacking formal schooling beyond basic literacy, Blake received homeschooling and demonstrated early artistic talent, enrolling at age 10 in Henry Pars' drawing academy, where he honed skills in copying classical works.[7] At age 14 in 1771, he began a seven-year apprenticeship under engraver James Basire, involving antiquarian fieldwork that exposed him to Gothic architecture and medieval art, fostering his affinity for visionary and symbolic forms over neoclassical restraint.[7] [8] In 1778, Blake entered the Royal Academy Schools as an engraver but clashed with its president, Joshua Reynolds, rejecting empirical rationalism in favor of imaginative intuition; he supported himself as a journeyman engraver while composing poetry.[7] He married Catherine Boucher, an illiterate grocer's daughter, in 1782, training her in engraving and literacy; their childless union endured until his death, with Catherine assisting in his illuminated printing.[8] Following partner James Parker's death in 1788, Blake operated a print shop independently, innovating relief etching—a technique inspired by a 1787 vision of his deceased brother Robert—to produce illuminated books like Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), the latter including "A Poison Tree."[7] [8] A patronized move to Felpham in 1800 under poet William Hayley ended acrimoniously, leading to a 1804 sedition trial (from which he was acquitted) and return to London, where he continued prophetic works amid poverty until his death on August 12, 1827.[7] Blake's philosophy drew heavily from biblical sources, which he deemed the supreme model of poetic and artistic truth, interpreting them through personal visions beginning in childhood—such as seeing angels in trees—that affirmed divine presence in the natural world.[7] [8] He engaged Emanuel Swedenborg's mystical theology, attending New Church conferences around 1787, but soon critiqued its systematic rationalism in works like The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), favoring unbound human energy over doctrinal constraints.[7] Influences from Jacob Boehme's apocalyptic mysticism reinforced Blake's antinomian leanings, viewing moral laws and repressed passions as tyrannical forces that stifle imaginative vitality, a tension evident in his opposition to Enlightenment figures like Isaac Newton and John Locke, whom he saw as chaining perception to material limits.[9] Blake privileged the prophetic imagination as a direct conduit to eternal truths, rejecting organized religion's hypocrisy and advocating the integration of contraries—such as wrath and forgiveness—as essential to human wholeness.[7] This framework informed his critique of emotional suppression, positing that unexpressed passions fester destructively, aligning with his broader rejection of Urizenic reason in favor of liberated, creative forces.[7]Place in Songs of Experience
"A Poison Tree" occupies plate 49 in William Blake's illuminated book Songs of Innocence and of Experience, first issued in combined form in 1794.[4] This placement positions the poem within the Songs of Experience sequence, which Blake conceived as the contrary to the earlier Songs of Innocence (1789), portraying a world marred by repression, institutional corruption, and the perversion of human faculties.[2] The poem's extended metaphor of cultivated wrath aligns with the collection's overarching critique of how "experience" distorts innate passions into sources of deception and destruction, rather than allowing their open expression as in innocence.[5] Thematically, "A Poison Tree" exemplifies Blake's exploration of moral causality in a fallen state, where unvented anger—suppressed toward a foe—fosters deceitful growth akin to the biblical Tree of Knowledge, leading to the foe's demise.[10] This contrasts with the healthy dissipation of wrath through communication with God or a friend, underscoring Blake's belief in the necessity of contraries for human vitality, a principle recurrent in Experience's indictment of Urizenic reason that enforces emotional restraint.[2] Unlike paired poems such as "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," it lacks a direct innocent counterpart, emphasizing instead the irreversible consequences of internalized conflict in adulthood.[5] In Blake's hand-printed copies, the poem's visual elements on plate 49—a glowing tree laden with fruit beside a sleeping figure—reinforce its narrative of hidden poison, integrating text and image to convey the insidious nature of repressed emotion within the collection's visionary critique of societal and personal hypocrisy.[4] Scholars note its role in highlighting individual agency amid systemic failings, as the speaker's deliberate nurturing of wrath mirrors broader themes of tyrannical control and self-deception pervading Songs of Experience.[11]Publication and Form
Original Publication Details
"A Poison Tree" first appeared in William Blake's Songs of Experience, a collection of poems etched and printed by the author in 1794.[2][4] Blake employed his unique method of relief etching on copper plates to produce the text and illustrations, which he then hand-printed onto paper and colored with watercolors, resulting in limited illuminated copies sold directly from his home.[4] This self-published approach allowed Blake full artistic control but limited distribution, with Songs of Experience expanding upon his earlier Songs of Innocence (1789) to form the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.[3] In the collection, "A Poison Tree" occupies plate 49 in extant copies, accompanied by Blake's own symbolic illustration of a tree bearing poisonous fruit.[4] The 1794 edition of Songs of Experience comprised twenty-seven plates, reflecting Blake's integration of poetry and visual art as a unified prophetic medium.[4]Poetic Structure, Meter, and Devices
"A Poison Tree" consists of four quatrains, each structured as two rhyming couplets, creating a simple and symmetrical form that mirrors the poem's progression from initial anger to its destructive fruition.[2] This stanzaic organization divides the narrative into distinct phases: the contrast between expressed and suppressed wrath in the first stanza, the nurturing of hidden anger in the second and third, and the fatal consequence in the fourth.[2] The AABB rhyme scheme, utilizing perfect rhymes such as "friend/end" and "foe/grow," reinforces a rhythmic predictability that evokes the repetitive, insidious growth of the central metaphor.[2][12] The meter is predominantly trochaic tetrameter catalectic, featuring four stressed-unstressed feet per line with the omission of the final unstressed syllable, as in the scansion of the opening line: "I was | angry | with my | friend."[2] This falling rhythm imparts a hypnotic, song-like quality akin to nursery rhymes, underscoring the deceptive innocence of suppressed emotions.[2] However, variations occur, with three lines (the second, fourth, and sixteenth) shifting to iambic tetrameter (unstressed-stressed pattern), such as "My foe | outstretched | beneath | the tree," which heightens tension at key moments of resolution and irony.[2] Some stylistic analyses alternatively characterize the dominant meter as iambic tetrameter, emphasizing its ballad-like flow, though the trochaic elements better capture the poem's emphatic, cautionary tone.[13] Blake employs an extended metaphor of a "poison tree" to symbolize the cultivation of unexpressed wrath, transforming abstract emotion into a tangible, organic entity that "grew" through deliberate care with "tears" of deceit and "smiles" of deception.[2] Personification animates this process, attributing human actions like "watering," "dressing," and "sunning" to wrath itself, which "bore an apple bright" as a symbol of alluring yet lethal temptation.[2] Biblical allusion, particularly to the Genesis account of the Tree of Knowledge and the forbidden fruit, infuses the imagery with moral causality, implying that hidden sin leads to death.[2] Anaphora through repeated phrases like "And I watered it in fears" and "And I sunned it with smiles" builds momentum, paralleling the stanzas' syntactic simplicity and directness to reflect the speaker's calculated nurture of malice.[2] Parallel structure contrasts the brief resolution of wrath toward a friend ("I told my wrath, my wrath did end") with the expansive growth toward a foe, employing antithesis to highlight causal consequences.[2] Phonological devices, including assonance (e.g., "bright apple" with its /aɪ/ sounds) and consonance, enhance the auditory menace, while the poem's phonological patterns—such as end-rhymes and rhythmic consistency—amplify its allegorical impact.[13]Textual Content
Full Text of the Poem
The full text of "A Poison Tree," as it appears in William Blake's Songs of Experience (1794), reads: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. 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 veil'd the pole:
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.[1][14]