Table of Contents
A Poison Tree is one of the most concentrated and unsettling poems in William Blake’s Songs of Experience (1794). In sixteen short lines it traces the growth of unspoken anger from a private grievance into a lethal force. What begins as a simple contrast between two ways of handling wrath ends with a corpse beneath a tree and a speaker who is glad to see it. The poem’s nursery-rhyme simplicity only sharpens its moral edge.
The Complete 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 waterd 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
William Blake, Songs of Experience (1794)
When the night had veild the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Summary
The speaker first describes anger directed at a friend. He speaks the anger aloud; it ends. He then describes anger directed at an enemy. He keeps silent; the anger grows. The rest of the poem follows that growth. The speaker tends the wrath as if it were a plant: watering it with fears and tears, giving it sunlight through false smiles and cunning. The anger becomes a tree that produces a bright, attractive apple. The foe sees the apple, recognizes it as the speaker’s, and steals into the garden at night to take it. In the morning the speaker finds the enemy dead beneath the tree and feels glad.
The narrative is stark. Expression dissolves anger; suppression cultivates it until it becomes fatal. The final emotion is not remorse but satisfaction.
Line-by-Line and Structural Analysis
Stanza 1: Two Kinds of Anger
The opening quatrain sets up a clean opposition. With the friend, speech ends the wrath. With the foe, silence lets it grow. The parallel syntax (“I was angry... I told...”) makes the contrast unmistakable. Blake does not moralize yet; he simply records the different outcomes of expression and concealment. The stanza functions like a proverb that the rest of the poem will dramatize.
Stanza 2: Cultivation of Wrath
The anger is now treated as a living thing that can be watered and sunned. Fears and tears become the moisture; smiles and “soft deceitful wiles” become the sunlight. The speaker is actively nursing the emotion he refuses to speak. Hypocrisy is not a side effect; it is the method of cultivation. The language remains calm and methodical, which makes the self-deception more chilling.
Stanza 3: The Fruit
The tree grows continuously (“both day and night”) until it produces “an apple bright.” The brightness is important. The fruit is not obviously repulsive; it is attractive, even desirable. The foe sees it shine and knows it belongs to the speaker. Desire and recognition prepare the theft that follows. The apple is the visible, tempting form of the hidden wrath.
Stanza 4: Theft, Death, and Gladness
The foe enters the garden under cover of night (“when the night had veiled the pole”). The secrecy of the theft mirrors the secrecy in which the anger was grown. Morning reveals the body “outstretched beneath the tree.” The speaker’s response is a single word of emotion: “glad.” The poem ends on that note of satisfaction. No further comment is offered. The moral weight is left for the reader to carry.
Major Themes
Suppressed versus Expressed Anger
The poem’s clearest argument is that unspoken anger does not disappear. It grows. Spoken anger, at least in the case of the friend, can end. Blake presents suppression not as patience or Christian forbearance but as a dangerous form of self-corruption that eventually harms others.
Deceit and Hypocrisy
The smiles and “soft deceitful wiles” are essential to the tree’s growth. The speaker maintains a friendly exterior while nurturing lethal intent. The poem links emotional repression with active dishonesty; the two feed each other.
The Corrupting Effect of Hatred
By the final stanza the speaker has become capable of gladness at another’s death. The process that began with simple anger has produced a moral transformation. The poem suggests that sustained, secret enmity changes the person who harbors it.
Temptation and Responsibility
The bright apple lures the foe. Yet the foe chooses to steal it. The poem distributes agency: the speaker cultivates the poison and makes it visible; the enemy reaches for it. Both participate in the fatal outcome.
Inversion of Biblical Imagery
The garden, the tree, and the tempting fruit deliberately recall the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge. In Blake’s version the planter of the deadly tree is the human speaker, and the “fall” results in the death of the foe rather than the exile of humanity. Some readers see a critique of a wrathful divine figure; others see a warning about human capacity for vengeful creation.
Symbolism
- The tree — The extended metaphor for suppressed wrath. What begins as an emotion is given roots, growth, and fruit. The tree externalizes an internal state and makes its consequences visible.
- Watering with fears and tears — The emotional fuel of anxiety and private suffering that keeps the anger alive. Night and morning suggest constant, unrelieved attention.
- Sunning with smiles and wiles — False friendliness as nourishment. The outward performance of goodwill is what allows the hidden hatred to thrive.
- The apple bright — The attractive, poisonous product of long-tended anger. Its brightness makes it desirable; its origin makes it deadly. It echoes the forbidden fruit of Genesis while remaining the speaker’s own creation.
- The garden — The private space in which the anger is cultivated and into which the foe trespasses. It is both the speaker’s inner world and a literal setting for the final act.
- Night veiling the pole — Concealment and the cover of darkness. The theft occurs when ordinary moral and social visibility is reduced.
- The outstretched foe — The physical result of the entire process. The body beneath the tree is the poem’s final image and its moral shock.
Form, Tone, and Technique
The poem is written in rhyming couplets arranged in four quatrains. The meter is predominantly trochaic, giving the lines a strong, almost chant-like rhythm that recalls nursery rhymes or moral fables. That formal simplicity is deliberate. Blake uses the sound of innocence to deliver a lesson from experience. The diction is plain; there are almost no abstract nouns beyond “wrath,” “fears,” and “wiles.” Concrete actions (watering, sunning, stealing, seeing) carry the meaning.
The tone remains controlled until the final adjective “glad.” That single word of emotion, placed at the moment of discovery, is more disturbing than any outburst would have been. The speaker does not celebrate loudly; he simply records satisfaction. The restraint makes the corruption feel complete.
Context within Songs of Experience
Songs of Experience presents a world in which institutional religion, social hypocrisy, and repressed desire produce suffering. “A Poison Tree” fits this vision by showing how a personal emotion, when forced underground and dressed in false virtue, becomes destructive. The original title “Christian Forbearance” points toward Blake’s suspicion of a morality that prizes silence and outward meekness while ignoring the hatred those postures can conceal. In the published version the title shifts attention to the result: the poison tree itself.
Blake’s illuminated plates for the poem (in the various copies of the Songs) often show a dark, twisted tree and a limp body, reinforcing the verbal imagery with visual starkness.
Interpretive Possibilities
Most readers take the poem as a psychological and moral warning: unspoken anger grows dangerous. Some extend the reading theologically, seeing the speaker as a figure for a punitive God who sets a tempting trap, or as a critique of religious teachings that encourage the suppression of natural feeling. Others emphasize the social dimension: the poem exposes how polite surfaces can mask lethal intentions. All of these readings grow from the same clear narrative. The poem’s power lies in how much interpretive space its simplicity leaves open.
Closing Perspective
“A Poison Tree” begins with two ordinary experiences of anger and ends with a death that the speaker welcomes. Between those points Blake shows the patient, daily work of turning a feeling into a weapon. The tree is grown in secret, watered with private tears, and sunned with public smiles. When the fruit finally appears, bright and desirable, the foe reaches for it and dies. The speaker looks on and is glad. The poem does not ask us to share that gladness. It asks us to notice how it became possible.
Primary text: William Blake, “A Poison Tree,” from Songs of Experience (1794). Analysis informed by the poem’s place in Blake’s illuminated books and by long-standing critical attention to its treatment of anger, hypocrisy, and biblical allusion.