A Poison Tree by William Blake
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,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Analysis of A Poison Tree by William Blake
It is a mistake to read A Poison Tree at the beginning of a course on Romanticism poetry, as reading it without the context of what nature really means and can be gives the impression that anger, as a feeling itself, is to be condemned. And it very well may be, but a romantic cannot help but read of Blake’s tree without seeing anything but a wondrous trophy or even a positive attribute of rage. For as Wordsworth so memorably said about Tintern Abbey, Shelley about the West Wind, and Keats about the entire season of Autumn, it is quite impossible to look at a tree with anything other than awe and appreciation. Whether Blake was aware of the beauty of his poison tree is almost irrelevant when analyzing it in the context of the romantic period. William Blake’s A Poison Tree takes a modern approach to rage and justice in conversation with beauty and biblical characteristics, using a tree as a metaphor for the evils that result. It may be unfair to place such importance on the aesthetic value of Blake’s tree, but however he meant it, Blake’s poison tree, in the context of the romantic era and modern historical phenomena, holds utmost appositeness and significance.
Blake’s singsong approach to speaking about murderous anger does not demonstrate the same kind of reverence and serious attitude toward anger that the meter of an elegy (dactylic) or an ode (undetermined) would warrant. Rather, Blake wrote in trochaic tetrameter with AABB rhyming couplets, otherwise a very playful meter. The meter also inadvertently infantilizes anger, as the poem itself sounds childlike, and matches the theme of the beautification of rage that this poem mirrors. The length of this poem (four stanzas, sixteen lines) is also not one that relates itself to a dramatic warning against the poisoning and corrupting nature of rage, but rather to a small soiree for the pleasantries rage brings. These three aspects, the meter, rhyming scheme, and length, contrast with the face value of the content of A Poison Tree, the face value being: unspoken rage is destructive. This verdict is found uncomplicated from reading the summary of the poem: the author is angry at his foe, his anger, fear, and deceitful wiles culminate in a tree that grows tall with an apple. The foe eats the apple and dies. This conclusion would suggest a structure less jolly than trochaic tetrameter, which, combined with the diction, biblical allegory, and symbol of the tree used in the poem (to be expanded on later) lead the reader to understand that conclusion to be not entirely grim. Instead, the meaning of this poem can be taken to be: Rage is destructive…beautiful, godly, and complicated.
The first half of the title: Poison, may negate any semblance of beauty, however, Blake’s diction throughout the poem does not indicate any kind of ugliness. Blake, while he rejected the establishment of the Christian Church, was a devout Christian. Given this, words like “sunned,” “bright,” and “shine,” all relating to the sun, can be seen through the Christian lens as a symbol of hope. Not only is the sun continually a symbol of hope in the Holy Bible, but the Bible says “the sun shall not smite thee by day,” meaning the sun does not harm. On further inspection, this directly contradicts the poisonous nature of the tree, though not entirely as the tree is still capable of murder. The biblical nature of the tree too cannot be ignored. The author’s emotions foster a tree with a shiny apple full of sin that, when bitten, poisons the eater. The curious difference, however, between Blake’s apple and the apple in Genesis, is that where Eve eats and becomes enlightened, Blake’s foe simply drops dead. This being written as a criticism of the unrealism in the original tale of genesis is unlikely as Blake’s religious beliefs would have collided heavily with that point. It is more likely that Blake saw Eve’s enlightenment as pure sin, accurately replicated by an act of murder. Even so, the metaphor still stands; The two committed a sin and were punished for it, one with knowledge, the other with death. The most obvious similarity between Blake’s and God’s trees are their deceptive appearances. The tree’s image of being a beautiful thing of nature, there to nourish, is the same property as that of the silent rage. Blake articulates that he keeps his anger quiet, putting on a happy face when underneath he is brewing poison.
Should the biblical allegory be drawn even further, Blake himself would take up the role of God, as he was the creator of the tree. Assuming Blake understands any act of God (creator of trees) to be a righteous and morally correct one, the tree must be a morally good thing too. This goodness is exemplified by the bright shiny apple hanging from the tree’s branch, which in fact is the true deception. Because even though the tree appears morally good, contradiction lies in the poison nature of the apple. Apples have long been used as motifs of evil disguised with a pretty face. The apple of knowledge in the book of Genesis is the most memorable, others include Snow White’s poison apple, and Aphrodite’s apple of beauty. Each was shiny and unassuming, but once bitten into, unleashed a world of hurt. The literary motif of the apple can best be compared to the contradiction of beauty that comes with experiencing rage. The discrepancy between something so beautiful causing such harm is worth analysis, but the alternative is that there is no discrepancy at all. That just like how an apple appears to offer good health but offers the opposite, beauty brings something more sinister than what human biology has suggested is simply an indicator of a suitable mate. And vice versa, rage is not the morally bankrupt emotion it seems to be, rage could culminate in beauty.
The belief though that anger could ever produce something of beauty, has had somewhat of a renaissance in recent years, unless Blake was extremely ahead of his time. Before confirming the latter, it is worth mentioning that this supposed “renaissance” has had its roots in feminine rage, beauty, and expression. This feminine quality is significant because beauty and femininity have always been linked, even treated as one and the same, throughout history, so feminine rage and beauty must hold the same connection. For instance, while Stephen King’s Carrie was bringing down buildings and burning up her entire town, she is still wearing a pink and form-fitting prom dress. While The Last Night in Soho’s Sandie Collins was slashing the throats of the men who sexually used and abused her, her eye makeup was done up just right, and she was wearing a lacy slip. This dichotomy stands not just in modernity but in history too; while Circe is bewitching Odysseus’ men and turning them into swine, she is singing in a “high and clear voice” wearing “lovely braids.” And while A Poison Tree is not an example of female rage, it does hold the same kind of singsong infantilization, the same quality of “rage can be made beautiful” that is present in modern feminist revenge tales. The Poison Tree itself, however, is not the only process of beautification Blake partakes in.
Wrath being beautiful on its own, devoid of justice, is a claim which defies explanation. It is impossible to express rage in art in a way that portrays it in an ugly way, in what some would call the accurate way, simply because art itself is beautiful. Even to write the most depraved scenes of anger would give wrath beauty, because literature is a beautiful art form. One memorable description of rage reads, “But death wasn’t coming; she wasn’t dying, she wasn’t hurt, even; she could see no change in her body even though it felt as if she were being consumed by fire…no, she was whole, but something was burning inside. Something was disappearing.” To try and write truly ugly rage is futile, and subsequently trying to find proof that anger is ugly is just as vain. As soon as humanity expresses itself, it gives birth to beauty, if not metaphorically then aesthetically; Rage can be beautiful because of its underlying meaning, justice, vengeance, but also because expressing emotion with words, facial expressions, gestures, etc. is satisfying to the senses. Therefore, when Blake sat down to write a poem about the ugly consequences of anger, he had failed before he even started. Of the various art forms, visual arts, plastic arts, performing arts, literature is one of the most visceral and direct, but even then, the act of putting into words is an act of beautification. Also too, poetry is arguably the most artistic of the categories of literature, and with the rhythmic verse Blake chose, presents itself as a truly beautiful piece of art.
It is my personal belief that anger has always been a useless emotion, even happiness too. The two, in excess, lead occasionally to mania, hysteria, and ultimately a dribbling and nonsensical end; Useless meaning producing nothing (not capital, art, stimulus, or even, quite ironically what is seen as the most useless among the aforementioned traits: beauty). However, Blake’s A Poison Tree demonstrates the potential of rage and beauty, and how the two exist as brother and sister is the thesis that came from my reading of the poem. As a whole, though, A Poison Tree reinvigorates my understanding of what anger is and can do.
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Works Cited
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King, Stephen. Carrie. Hornsea, England, Ps Publishing Ltd, 2014.
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Last Night in Soho. Directed by Edgar Wright, Focus Features, Universal Pictures, 22 Oct. 2021.
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