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William Blake · Edexcel Conflict anthology
Edexcel10 questions available at this level
by William Blake
Blake was a Romantic poet, painter and printmaker, almost entirely outside the literary establishment of his time. He combined poetry with hand-coloured engravings and was deeply religious in an unorthodox way, hostile to organised religion and to social injustice.
"A Poison Tree" appears in Songs of Experience, the darker companion volume to Songs of Innocence. The two volumes show the same world from opposing perspectives: the experienced speaker has seen how deceit, repression and institutional cruelty corrupt human nature.
The poem is saturated with biblical imagery. The "garden", the "apple" and the foe lying "beneath the tree" all echo the Fall of Man in Genesis. But Blake reverses the moral: in the Bible, the serpent tempts Eve; here, it is the speaker who plays the serpent and grows the poisonous fruit himself.
Blake was influenced by the radical writer Emanuel Swedenborg and the political upheavals of the 1790s, including the French and American Revolutions. He believed honest expression of emotion was a moral duty — suppression caused real harm. The poem dramatises that belief.
“I told it not, my wrath did grow”
The poem’s thesis. The simple monosyllabic phrase "told it not" is paired with the active verb "grow" — silence becomes a kind of nourishment. The end-rhyme of "foe" and "grow" links concealment with expansion in the reader’s ear.
“And I water'd it in fears”
The metaphor of anger as a plant takes hold. "Water'd" makes fear sound nourishing rather than draining — the speaker is actively keeping his anger alive. The old spelling "water'd" adds a slightly archaic, parable-like feel (Blake’s own plate has "waterd").
“And with soft deceitful wiles”
The sibilance ("soft", "deceitful", "wiles") evokes a serpent and looks ahead to the Eden imagery. Blake exposes the danger of the "soft" mask of social politeness: a smile can be a weapon when it hides genuine feeling.
“Till it bore an apple bright”
The metaphor crystallises into a single image. The "apple" is a direct allusion to Eden, while "bright" suggests beauty masking poison. The plant of anger has produced a tempting weapon — hatred made visible and irresistible.
“And into my garden stole”
The verb "stole" carries both meanings: the foe creeps in stealthily and also commits theft. The "garden" makes the Eden parallel inescapable. The foe is being cast as Adam, but the speaker has set the trap rather than God.
“In the morning glad I see”
The most chilling line in the poem. "Glad" is a single short word that exposes how completely anger has corrupted the speaker. Morning, traditionally an image of rebirth and hope, becomes the moment of moral death.
“My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree”
The closing tableau. The tree is now a gallows; the foe is laid out like a sacrifice. The poem ends in stillness — the speaker offers no remorse, no judgement, no commentary. The reader is forced to supply the moral.
“I was angry with my friend / I was angry with my foe”
The opening parallel sets up the entire argument. The grammatical mirror invites comparison: same anger, two outcomes. The reader knows immediately that the difference will be moral as well as practical.
“And I water'd it in fears / Night and morning with my tears”
Anger becomes a plant the speaker cultivates. The metaphor grows across the whole poem, ending with the "apple" and the body beneath the "tree". It dramatises how nourishing resentment turns it into something deadly.
“Till it bore an apple bright”
Direct echo of the Genesis story of the Fall. The garden, the apple and the tree all evoke Eden. Blake reverses the moral: the speaker plays the serpent, growing his own forbidden fruit — hatred dressed as beauty.
“And with soft deceitful wiles”
The hissing "s" sounds suggest a serpent and reinforce the Eden allusion. Sibilance also makes the speaker’s deceit feel insidious and seductive, slipping past moral defences.
“I was angry with my friend … I was angry with my foe”
The grammatical mirroring of lines 1 and 3 sets up a moral comparison. Identical structure but different outcome forces the reader to focus on the single variable: did the speaker speak his anger or hide it?
“In the morning glad I see”
The falling trochaic rhythm gives the poem a hypnotic, chant-like quality, almost a nursery rhyme. The simple beat makes the moral horror at the end land harder by contrast.
“I water'd … I sunned … I see”
The speaker repeats "I" as the active subject of every act of cultivation. Blake makes clear that suppressed anger is something we choose to grow — it is not something that happens to us.
Strong pairings with A Poison Tree from the Edexcel Conflict collection.
John Agard
Both poems are about anger that finds expression. Blake’s speaker bottles it up with fatal results; Agard’s speaker turns his rage into defiant, public performance. Compare the two responses to injustice.
Lord Byron
Both poems use biblical imagery to dramatise destruction. Byron stages divine wrath; Blake stages human wrath disguised as something divine. Compare the moral framing of violence.
Christina Rossetti
Both poems centre on suppressed feeling that turns to bitter hatred. Rossetti’s speaker, like Blake’s, is unable to release her anger — and it corrodes her from within.