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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 water\'d it in fears, Night & morning with my tears; And I sunned it with my 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 veil\'d the pole: In the morning glad I see My foe outstretch\'d beneath the tree Biography William Blake was born in London in 1757. He grew up in a quite poor and simple family.
Bild. He had learned the profession of an engraver - that's someone who makes gravures into some copper plates - and after thet, he had visited the royal academy of art in London. Since he was 8 years old, William Blake started to have visions which accompained him through all his life and through his works. Blake was not only a poet, he worked also as a painter. He developed his own techniques of colorating copper stitches. Bild ā This is the painting "god as architect" by William Blake.
His first book "Illuminated books" was published in 1789. In 1794, his book \"Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul\" was published and got a big success. In this book of poems, we can also find "A poison tree", my poem. 1794 - Songs of experience Rhyme pattern The rhyme pattern of the poem is a very easy and clear aa bb structure. The poem is written in quatrains. That's the definition of a poem with stanzas of four lines Beat pattern Each line in the poem is splitted up into two parts.
Every part ends with an intonated syllable. The first half of the line counts three beats, the second one counts four. Interpretation I think this poem is full of moral and also biblic allusions. If we look at the first stanza, we see two different ways of handling our problems: The first two lines show us the right way of dealing with our problems with other human beings. "I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end." And the following two lines show us the wrong way of dealing with our emotions: "I was angry with my foe, I told it not, my wrath did grow".
The conflict with the friend, was resolved already after two lines. The conflict with his foe in contrast lasts until the end of the poem; until death. And this shows us the fact that we should talk about our conflicts and not to take them with us silently into our grave. The last two stanzas of the poem give us a metaphorical solution to the problem: The apple that appears on the tree is clearly an allusion to the forbidden apple in paradise. The wonderful colour and shine of the apple wakes temptation inside of the foe who is representing the biblic Eve. He can't resist on this temptation.
Originally, it means that he will be banned from paradise. But in the poem, he wil be banned from life: it means his death by being poisoned. This way of resolving problems is clearly the wrong one, the foe was in fact not innocent, but to bring him death in this gutless way is very cruel. My opinion I really liked this poem because it was so easy to understand on the first look, but I knew there would be much more than this. And so, I began to discover more and more symbols and morals and I was quite impressed to see finally how stuffed by intelligent text these few lines are. I quickly found some poems by William Blake on the internet, and I liked them almost all.
Finally, I chosed the one I liked the most and the one I could best identify with. I can identify very well with it, because there's nothing I hate more than conflict situations which can not be cleared by a discussion.
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