A Poison Tree by William Blake: Summary, Analysis, Symbolism & Themes

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. Quick Facts Written by William Blake. Published in 1794 in Songs of Experience . Original working title: “Christian Forbearance.” Form: four quatrains of rhyming couplets. Central device: extended metaphor of anger as a cultivated tree that bears poisonous fruit. 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, T…