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A Poison Tree
William Blake
About William Blake
William Blake was an English painter and poet. He was not very well known during his lifetime, but his work later inspired many great writers and poets, including William Butler Yeats and Aldous Huxley. His thoughts on human nature and spirituality are thought of as original and groundbreaking.
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 and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And 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 veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Available Answers
- 1.In stanza 1, the speaker makes a contrast between two occasions when he got angry with someone. What is the contrast? (Think of who he was angry with, what he did or did not do and What happened, as a result, to his anger.)
- 2.What words in stanza 2 show that the speaker is now talking of his anger as if it were a seed or a small plant? What served as water for the plant? What served as sunlight?
- 3.The plant grew both from the speaker's inner feelings and from his outward behaviour. What caused the inner feelings and the outward behaviour?
- 4.In the story of Adam and Eve, there is a tree whose fruit is not to be eaten. Adam and Eve, however, do eat the fruit, disobeying God, and are banished from the Garden of Eden for doing so. Does anything in this poem remind you of that story? If so, what is the similarity between the two?
- 5.Can we guess what attitude the speaker's enemy had? (What happened when he saw the shining apple? Did he want it simply because it was attractive? How did he try to get hold of it? What attitude does this show?)
- 6.Did the speaker's own attitude change when he saw his enemy dead? How does he describe his feelings at that moment? Can we say that even the death of his enemy did not end the anger and hatred?
2 more answer(s) available.