A Poison Tree (Edexcel GCSE English Literature)

Your Edexcel GCSE English Literature Poetry Anthology contains 15 poems, and in your exam you will be given one poem – printed in full – and asked to compare it to another one from the anthology. As this is a “closed book” exam, you will not have access to the second poem, so you will need to know it from memory. Fifteen poems is a lot to revise. However, if you understand these four essential things about each poem, you will be able to produce a top-grade response:

• The meaning of the poem
• The ideas and messages the poet wanted to convey
• How the poet uses poetic methods to convey these ideas and messages
• How the ideas and themes in each poem compare and contrast with the ideas and themes of the other poems in the anthology

Here is a guide to William Blake’s 'A Poison Tree', from the Conflict Anthology. It includes the following sections:

• Overview: a breakdown of the poem, including its possible meanings and interpretations
• Writer’s methods: an analysis of the poet’s techniques and methods
• Context: an exploration of the poem’s context in relation to its themes
• What to compare it to: suggestions about which poems to compare it to in the exam

The poem is from Edexcel’s Poetry Anthology.

To answer an essay question on any poem, you must understand what it is about. This section includes:

• The poem in a nutshell
• An explanation of the poem, section-by-section
• An outline of Blake’s intention and message in each of these sections

'A Poison Tree' in a nutshell

'A Poison Tree' depicts a conflict between the speaker and his enemy. It focuses on the dangers and consequences of suppressing feelings of anger. When the speaker is angry with his friend, he finds it easy to tell his friend about his feelings, but he is unable to do the same thing with his enemy. His anger towards his enemy grows stronger, until he becomes obsessed by it. Blake uses the extended metaphor of a tree growing in the speaker’s garden to describe the growth of his anger; the fruit from the tree eventually poisons his enemy. Although the speaker shows no regret about his enemy’s death, the poem carries a powerful message about the importance of expressing our emotions, even difficult ones.    

'A Poison Tree' breakdown

Lines 1–4

“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.”

Explanation

• The speaker is angry with his friend
• He tells his friend about his anger (“wrath”):
• By talking to his friend about his anger, he is able to overcome the feelings of wrath
• The speaker is then angry with his enemy (“foe”)
• He doesn’t tell his enemy about his feelings, and therefore his anger increases

Blake’s intention

• By sharing his feelings of anger with his friend, the speaker is able to resolve them and stop feeling angry
• However, he is not able to do the same thing when he feels angry with his enemy:
• This means he cannot move forward and deal with his feelings, so they increase
• By juxtaposing the two situations, Blake is demonstrating that uncomfortable feelings, like anger, can be overcome if they are discussed
• However, if difficult feelings are not discussed, they are not resolved and instead become stronger, leading to greater conflict

Lines 5–8

“And I water’d it in fears, 

Night and morning with my tears; 

And I sunned it with smiles, 

And with soft deceitful wiles.”

Explanation

• The speaker describes how he nurtures his growing anger:
• His anger becomes like a thing that is growing external to him
• He nurtures his anger by focusing his fears on it (“water’d” is an archaic way of writing “watered”), in the same way as he would nurture a growing tree
• Every day, at night and in the morning, his tears make his anger grow stronger
• He provides the “sun” for its growth by smiling and deceiving others about his true feelings; his “wiles” are his devious actions

Blake’s intention

• These lines show how the speaker’s anger increases when he keeps it to himself
• Blake’s extended metaphor depicts how the speaker’s anger is so powerful that it has become like an external thing, with a life of its own
• By using the metaphor of a tree for the speaker’s anger, Blake is showing how repressed negative feelings can corrupt nature itself
• However, the things that nurture the tree are the speaker’s fear and sadness – “fears” and “tears” show just how unhealthy his obsession is
• The obsessive nature of the speaker’s anger is shown by him focusing on it constantly, “night and morning”
• Hiding his feelings from other people by smiling and pretending nothing is wrong only strengthens the speaker’s anger and sense of inner conflict

Lines 9–12

“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,”

Explanation

• The tree that represents the speaker’s anger grows constantly
• Eventually, it produces a fruit – a shining apple
• The speaker’s enemy sees the apple and knows that it is the product of the speaker’s anger

Blake’s intention

• These lines show that suppressed anger can grow uncontrollably and result in consequences
• The speaker’s tree bears fruit; in this extended metaphor, Blake is showing how suppressed anger can produce a negative outcome 
• By ending the lines describing the apple with the adjectives “bright” and “shine”, Blake emphasises its perfection and attractiveness
• But, because the apple has grown out of the speaker’s anger, its appearance is deceptive, so it becomes a symbol of both wrath and deceit
• The speaker’s enemy recognises the apple as a result of the speaker’s anger and their conflict; even suppressed anger finally reveals itself

Lines 13–16

“And into my garden stole

When the night had veil’d the pole:

In the morning glad I see 

My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.”

Explanation

• The speaker’s enemy sneaks into speaker’s garden at night:
• The reference to the “pole” could mean the apple tree itself, or it could refer to the pole star (Polaris, the North Star)
• If the reference is to the pole star, the fact that it is “veil’d” (covered over with clouds) could be a further metaphor for the way in which anger can obscure morality
• It is implied that the speaker’s enemy eats the apple:
• The speaker is happy to see his enemy lying under the tree the next morning
• Although they are only described as “outstretch’d” (stretched out), the implication is that they have died

Blake’s intention

• These lines demonstrate the destructive result of suppressed anger and unresolved conflict
• Blake uses the homophone “stole” to imply the furtive nature of the enemy’s actions and their taking of the apple without permission:
• This shows how the negative consequences of suppressed anger can spread to other people and affect their actions, creating a wider conflict
• The speaker is “glad” to see his enemy lying under the tree, showing that his anger has corrupted his morality and overwhelmed his personality
• The person who shared his anger with his friend at the beginning of the poem has become someone who delights in seeing the fatal result of his anger

Although this section is organised into three separate sections – form, structure and language – it is important to take an integrated approach to AO2. That means you should only consider what the poet is presenting (their techniques, the overall form of the poem, and how it is structured) to help you understand why they have made those choices. Think about how Blake’s language, structure and form contribute to his themes, message and intentions. 

Focusing on the themes, rather than individual poetic techniques, will gain you far more marks. In the following sections, all analysis is arranged by theme, including the intentions behind Blake’s choices of:

• Form
• Structure
• Language

Form

Blake’s regular rhyming scheme of AABB makes 'A Poison Tree' straightforward and easy to read, and gives it the feeling of a nursery rhyme. However, the simple form of the poem conceals Blake’s very complex subject matter, the consequences of suppressed anger and deception, just as his verses conceal the violent conflict they portray.

Theme	Evidence	Poet’s intention
Consequences of the suppression of anger	Blake uses a simple, regular ballad form and his narrator speaks in the first person (“I”): This makes the poem easy to read	The first-person speaker emphasises the directness of Blake’s didactic message, because the speaker is addressing the reader directly, rather than using the third person Anger is a common human emotion and Blake wants to convey his moral message very directly, by using a voice and a form of verse that feels universal
Deception	Blake’s regular verse form conceals the violence of his speaker’s feelings	The regular form of Blake’s quatrains gives the poem a strong sense of control This is juxtaposed with the uncontrollable nature of his speaker’s feelings; this may reflect the speaker’s deception by suppressing his anger Blake wants to show how the suppression of anger can overwhelm a person’s internal structures of personality and morality, creating an inner conflict

Structure

Blake uses a regular structure for his four stanzas. The line endings and beginnings, in particular, draw attention to the speaker’s suppression of anger and the importance of communication.

Theme	Evidence	Poet’s intention
The suppression of anger	There is a very early volta (turning point) after the first two lines: The speaker deals with his anger towards his friend in the first two lines; the rest of the poem describes how his suppressed anger towards his enemy spirals out of control	This emphasises the comparative power of suppressed anger Blake is showing how easy it is to address anger by expressing it, while unexpressed anger continues to grow uncontrollably Blake is showing how easy it is to address anger by expressing it, while unexpressed anger continues to grow uncontrollably
	Blake uses anaphora in the second and third stanzas to show how the process of suppressing anger has become compulsive and uncontrollable: Blake uses “And” at the beginning of several lines to suggest the speaker’s loss of emotional control	Suppressing his wrath makes the speaker continue to nurture it in a compulsive way
	The extended metaphor of the tree and the apple suggests a corruption of nature itself: The apple can be viewed as his anger growing larger and ripening	By using the metaphor of a tree to stand in for the speaker’s growing wrath, Blake suggests that nature is corrupted by suppressed anger and the speaker’s concealment of his true feelings Both the tree and the apple bring to mind the biblical story of the serpent (Satan) tempting Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, which results in Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden The speaker could, therefore, be likened to the serpent tempting his enemy Suppressed anger and deception not only corrupt nature, they are also unholy, in Blake’s view
The importance of communication	The first stanza uses punctuation to demonstrate the importance of communication and the link between actions and consequences: The first and third lines end with a colon (:) and the second and fourth lines end with a full stop, indicating that the consequences of each of the first two actions are inevitable. The colons here mean “and, therefore”	Blake is showing that sharing angry feelings – “I told my wrath” – is healthy and resolves the situation: “my wrath did end.” Not sharing these feelings – “I told it not” – means the speaker’s “wrath did grow”, leading to greater conflict

Language

Most of Blake’s language is very straightforward, even when it is unfamiliar to modern readers. His use of repetition emphasises his moral message about dealing with anger. Other techniques reveal information about the deception practised by the speaker.  

Theme	Evidence	Poet’s intention
Anger	Blake uses repetition to draw attention to the main theme of anger in the poem: The two couplets in the first stanza reflect each other in their language and structure In the first stanza, “angry” is repeated twice, and the metre of the lines emphasises the word. “Wrath” is also repeated three times in this stanza	The couplets present mirror images of the different outcomes of communicating and suppressing anger, which emphasises Blake’s central theme The use of repetition draws attention to the concept of anger as Blake’s main theme in the poem
	Blake uses the words “friend”, “foe”, “end” and “grow” in the first stanza to show how the speaker’s reactions to his anger produce two completely different outcomes	These binary oppositions show the two dramatically different consequences of sharing feelings of anger and suppressing them Blake is showing how communication is the best solution, while suppression leads to greater conflict
	Blake emphasises the continual nature of his anger by repeating “night and morning”  and “day and night”	This repetition reinforces the sense that the speaker’s anger has become obsessive and inescapable; he dwells on it all the time Blake is showing that suppressed anger can be dangerous, as it takes over a person’s whole consciousness
Deception	Blake uses sibilance in the second stanza: “And I sunned it with smiles”. This indicates the sinister nature of his deception	The repeated use of the “s” sound suggests a snake – perhaps another reference to the serpent in the Garden of Eden: This sibilance makes the statement sound sinister This line is also the only one in the poem that breaks the regular rhythm of the verse: it emphasises the wrongness of the speaker’s feelings and actions Blake suggests that the speaker’s concealment of his feelings has made him behave in a sinister and wrong, even evil, way

Context is important, but knowledge of it should only be used to support an answer about Blake’s ideas, themes and perspective. Examiners don’t want to see random chunks of information about Blake’s life or the times he lived in, because these things don’t tell them anything about your understanding of the poem. The ideas explored in 'A Poison Tree' revolve around the themes of anger and deception, so the contexts in which Blake formed his ideas about these things are the most relevant. Therefore, this section is divided into two themes:

• The suppression of anger
• The dangers of deception

The suppression of anger

• William Blake was a printer and illustrator. He published 'A Poison Tree' in 1794 in his poetry collection, “Songs of Innocence and Experience”
• All of Blake’s poems were accompanied by his own illustrations:
• The illustration to 'A Poison Tree' shows a sickly-looking tree clinging to the words of the poem
• This illustrates the way in which suppressed anger has an unhealthy hold over the speaker in the poem
• Blake did not believe that anger was wrong in itself:
• He was often angry about the greed and injustice he saw in his society
• Like other poets of the Romantic era, such as Wordsworth, Blake believed that emotional expression was a good thing:
• However, he saw emotional repression, such as the suppression of anger depicted in 'A Poison Tree', as unhealthy and damaging to an individual’s psyche, and to society more generally

The dangers of deception

• Blake had a very strong Christian faith, but he was angry about the beliefs and practices of the established Church in his time:
• He saw the Anglican Church as hypocritical and deceptive:
• The Church promised people everlasting life after death
• However, it didn’t do much to make ordinary people’s lives better
• In particular, Blake rejected the Church’s insistence on the suppression of emotion, especially negative emotions like anger:
• He saw this as dishonest and deceptive:
• This is because he believed that anger is a natural emotional response
• Therefore, suppressing anger leads to the kind of conflict he depicts in 'A Poison Tree' 
• Blake was heavily influenced by the Christian Bible, and by Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’:
• In 'A Poison Tree', Blake links a biblical story, retold by Milton, with the speaker’s deception:
• In the Bible, Satan disguises himself as a serpent to tempt Eve to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree; as a result, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden
• Blake links the serpent’s deception of Eve with the speaker’s deception – his “soft deceitful wiles”

Your exam essay will be a comparison of the ideas and themes explored in two of your anthology poems. Therefore, it’s essential to revise poems together, in pairs, to understand how each poet presents ideas about conflict in relation to the other poets in the anthology. The main themes in 'A Poison Tree' are the suppression of anger and the dangers of deception, so the following comparisons are the most appropriate:

• 'A Poison Tree' and 'The Man He Killed'
• 'A Poison Tree' and 'Cousin Kate'

For each pair of poems, you will find:

• The comparison in a nutshell
• Similarities between the ideas presented in each poem
• Differences between the ideas presented in each poem
• Evidence and analysis of these similarities and differences

'A Poison Tree' and 'The Man He Killed'

Comparison in a nutshell:

Both Thomas Hardy’s 'The Man He Killed' and 'A Poison Tree' explore the destruction of an enemy. Blake’s poem depicts the conflict between the speaker and his foe, while Hardy presents the speaker’s foe as somebody he might have been friends with in a different context. Blake depicts the suppression of anger as the motivating force for his conflict, but Hardy focuses his suppressed anger on the external conflict that has led to him killing a fellow human being.

Similarities:

Topic sentence	Both poems explore the destruction of an individual enemy in the context of a personal conflict (Blake) and a military conflict (Hardy)
Evidence and analysis	'A Poison Tree'	'The Man He Killed'
	Blake’s language shows that the conflict between the speaker and his foe is mutual: The foe sees the apple and “knew that it was mine”, which leads to the stealing of the apple and the enemy’s death	Hardy’s language also shows the mutual nature of the conflict between the speaker and his foe, an enemy soldier: The speaker “shot at him as he at me”, leading to the enemy’s death
	Blake uses anaphora to present the outcome of the conflict as inevitable: The repetition of “And” in the final two stanzas shows the enemy’s actions following a logical sequence “And my foe beheld it shine, / And he knew that it was mine, // And into my garden stole”	Hardy uses repetition to show that the outcome between the speaker and his enemy is a logical consequence of their situation:  “I shot him dead because - / Because he was my foe,/ Just so: my foe of course he was;”
	Both poems depict a mutual conflict between the speaker and their foe, and present the enemy’s death as inevitable

Topic sentence	Both poems use first-person narrators to illustrate the effects of suppressed anger directly and universally
Evidence and analysis	'A Poison Tree'	'The Man He Killed'
	'A Poison Tree' is a first-person narrative, making its moral message about the dangers of suppressing anger more direct and personal	'The Man He Killed' is written in the first person, which directly conveys the speaker’s regret and anger about his situation
	Blake’s poem tells the story of his speaker’s conflict in regular rhyming quatrains: This gives it a song-like quality that makes his moral message feel universal	Hardy uses a regular rhyming scheme for his quatrains, which gives his poem a universal, direct quality: This situation could happen to anyone
	In 'A Poison Tree', Blake shows how the speaker’s suppressed anger leads to a loss of emotional control over his actions and the situation	In 'The Man He Killed', Hardy conveys suppressed anger about the speaker’s situation, in which he has no choice or control over his actions
	Both poems illustrate how different contexts can result in a loss of personal autonomy and control of a situation

Differences:

Topic sentence	Violence and conflict are shown differently in each poem. In 'The Man He Killed' it is reluctant and regrettable, whereas in 'A Poison Tree' it is obsessive and personal
Evidence and analysis	'A Poison Tree'	'The Man He Killed'
	In Blake’s poem, the speaker’s anger, his “wrath”, is the cause of the conflict, and he nurtures it until it achieves his desired outcome – the destruction of his enemy	In Hardy’s poem, the speaker’s violence is compelled by his situation: His anger about this is conveyed in his sardonic comment, “Yes; quaint and curious war is!”
	Blake’s descriptions of how his speaker’s anger continually “did grow” and “grew” show how he becomes increasingly compulsive in his hatred, and is “glad” when it results in his enemy’s destruction	Hardy’s language shows that he doesn’t hate his enemy, and instead focuses on the similarities between them in phrases like “he and I” and “just as I”: He uses language such as “but”, “although” and “perhaps” to convey his regret over causing his enemy’s death
	'A Poison Tree' illustrates the power of suppressed anger to create conflict and overwhelm an individual’s emotional and moral stability	'The Man He Killed' illustrates the power of governments to create conflict and overwhelm an individual’s autonomy and moral choices
	Although there is anger in both poems, the anger in 'A Poison Tree' is internalised, whereas in 'The Man He Killed' it is directed outwards at the external forces that have created the conflict

'A Poison Tree' and 'Cousin Kate'

Both Christina Rossetti’s 'Cousin Kate' and Blake’s 'A Poison Tree' highlight the dangers of deception to an individual’s happiness and wellbeing. In Blake’s poem, the speaker deceives himself and those around him, while in Rossetti’s poem the speaker has been deceived by somebody else. In both poems, deception generates increased anger, hatred and bitterness. 

Similarities:

Topic sentence	Both poems show deception as dangerous and destructive
Evidence and analysis	'A Poison Tree'	'Cousin Kate'
	In 'A Poison Tree', Blake’s speaker conceals his anger: He “told it not”, and it spirals out of control	In Cousin Kate, the “great lord” conceals his true intention of making the speaker his “plaything”, and the situation becomes one she cannot control
	The speaker deceives those around him about his true feelings with “smiles / And with soft deceitful wiles.”	Initially, the speaker is attracted by the deceitful “praise” shown to her, and her deceiver does not reveal his true feelings
	In this poem, the speaker’s anger grows until it bears fruit, an “apple bright”, which tempts his enemy into the deceitful – and fatal – act of stealing it	In Rossetti’s poem, the speaker is “lured” by the lies her lover tells her, tempting her to transgress the social and moral rules of her society
	The theme of deception is key in both poems; it leads to a loss of control, temptation, and harm

Topic sentence	In both poems, deception is shown to lead to negative consequences, such as transgression or even death
Evidence and analysis	'A Poison Tree'	'Cousin Kate'
	In 'A Poison Tree', the metaphor of the tree and the apple link to the biblical story of Satan’s deception of Eve, whose transgression results in her banishment	In 'Cousin Kate', the lord’s deception leads to the speaker’s transgression, which results in her being regarded as “unclean” and an “outcast”
	Deception has catastrophic consequences for the speaker’s foe, who ends the poem “outstretch’d beneath the tree”	Deception results in the loss of an ordinary life for Rossetti’s speaker, who can only “sit and howl in dust” after her deceiver abandons her
	Deception is shown to be a dangerous and destructive force in both poems

Differences:

Topic sentence	While both poets explore the dangers of deception, they present this in different ways
Evidence and analysis	'A Poison Tree'	'Cousin Kate'
	In 'A Poison Tree', the deception is performed by the speaker, and those around him are deceived	In 'Cousin Kate', the speaker is the one who is deceived, leading to her social and moral ruin
	Blake shows how deception is caused by the speaker’s “wrath”, and provides an environment in which it can grow	Rossetti shows how the deception practised upon the speaker leads to her anger once the truth is revealed
	Blake’s poem presents his speaker’s deception as a continual process, which he carries on “day and night”: The linear structure of the narrative shows how his deception allows his anger to build	Rossetti’s poem is episodic, and her speaker moves back and forth between past and present: Her anger grows when she reflects on her situation and the deception that created it, moving from the self-pity of “I moan” to the rage of “I would have spit into his face”
	Anger is associated with deception in both poems, but in 'A Poison Tree' the speaker is driven to deception by his anger, while in 'Cousin Kate', the speaker is driven to anger by deception