A Poison Tree Poem Analysis

William Blake was a renowned poet whose works continue to be recognized long after his death. Blake was more than a poet he was also a painter and printmaker. Often his engraving art would act as the accompanying image to his poetry. Throughout his lifetime the British poet wrote several poems. The vast majority of Blake’s work was centered on strong religious themes or human existence itself. However in the works Sick Rose and London neither of these common themes is present. Though the two poems are different in content they both share an

The poem creates the theme that holding in anger may lead to awful consequences through first person point of view by describing the poet’s struggle to release his emotions that eventually cause him to hurt his enemy. For instance, after stating that he told his friend about his anger, and his anger died, Blake says, “ I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.” This quote from the poem shows that this is written in a first person point of view. The poet then goes on to describe how he watered down his anger, and it continued growing. At the end,

Humanity is but a facet of the sublime macrocosm that is the world’s landscapes. In the relationship between man and landscape, nature is perpetually authoritarian. In her free-verse poems, The Hawthorn Hedge, (1945) and Flame-Tree in a Quarry (1949), Judith Wright illustrates the how refusal to engage with this environment is detrimental to one’s sense of self, and the relentless endurance of the Australian landscape. This overwhelming force of nature is mirrored in JMW Turner’s Romantic artwork, Fishermen at Sea (1796). Both Wright and Turner utilise their respective texts to allegorise the unequal relationship between people and the unforgiving landscape.

times in the poem, by doing so, Blake is able to let the reader take

In the music video/song “Strange Fruit”, the phrase strange fruit doesn’t really refer to a fruit that is strange. It actually refers to people being lynched and hanging from trees. More specifically, the term strange fruit applies to the lynching of African Americans. This song was performed by Billie Holiday in 1939 at the Cafe Society in New York. The music video was actually a recorded performance from 1959. The song was written and performed because the purpose of was to raise awareness and fight against African American lynching because during that time, African Americans were being discriminated and abused. Billie Holiday in the music video/song “Strange Fruit” displays logos through context and imagery, pathos through her sorrowful tone and facial expressions, and lastly, ethos because she won many awards during her career in singing, and Strange Fruit is one of them.

     Blake expresses his poem in first person, as a young chimney sweeper. This gives his poetic voice creditability because the subject of the poem is chimney sweepers. In addition, using first person creates a deeper sense of sympathy in the reader.

Blake wanted to show that there are two sides to every situation by writing companion pieces for most of his works. “The Chimney Sweeper”, for example, has the same title in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, as well as “Holy Thursday” that appears in both. “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” are also paired poems contrasting the concept of good and evil that Blake focused on through out his poems.

William Blake’s illuminated manuscripts were published in multiple editions; all of the editions were etched differently than its predecessor. In these illustrations, one finds meaning and value; an inextricable link between these artistic expressions and the text that Blake wrote exists. These works should not be viewed separately, but rather viewed together, as one single entity. While the text, at times, proves itself to be unstable and potentially confusing for readers, the etchings serve as a way to view the intention of Blake’s words, as well as expressing the underlying feeling attached to the text in a visual way. Understanding both pieces of art is crucial to the apprehension of the implied meaning of the works. Without having to read the words, the viewer already grasps the tone and perhaps even the content or context of the piece. The etchings force reader interaction with the poems, relying on the non-passivity of the audience. Blake intended for the illustrations and the texts to be viewed in correlation with one another, as it allows for a deeper understanding of the intended meaning.

Blake conveys the theme of another's actions being the reason for sadistic tendencies through characterization as well. The poem “A Poison Tree” tells of a man whose anger festers until he

Numerous artists make exceptionally uncertain implications when composing poetry. To some the understandings might be extremely energizing, while others consider them to be dull stories of a creator's life. As uninteresting as it may be to a few, individuals can especially identify with specific focuses being made in many types of poetry. In "The Root Cellar", Roethke examines in distinctive detail about the dim, moist, and rotten basement. The statements made are extremely discouraging and the thought of needing to surrender appears to be real. He depicts how everything stinks of rotting matter and how anything would not have the power to rest in such a place. Despite the fact that all appears to be lost, there

William Blake was a painter, engraver and poet of the Romantic era, who lived and worked in London. Many of Blake’s famous poems reside in his published collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This collection portrays the two different states of the human soul, good and evil. Many poems in the Songs of Innocence have a counterpart poem in the Songs of Experience. The poem “A Poison Tree” is found in the Songs of Experience and it delves into the mind of man tainted with sin and corruption that comes with experience. In a simple and creative style, the religious theology of the Fall of Man is brought to life. The poem tells the story of how man fell from a state of innocence to impurity, focusing on the harmful repercussions of suppressed anger. Blake utilities many literary devices to successfully characterizes anger as an antagonist with taunting power.

Rhyme is found all throughout the poem and has a huge effect on the reader. Blake used rhyme and detail to create some more wicked thoughts of the Tyger in the readers mind. Each stanza is made up of two couplets. Because these couplets keep a steady going rhyme, we

William Blake is one of England’s most famous literary figures. He is remembered and admired for his skill as a painter, engraver, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757 to a poor Hosier’s family living in or around London. Being of a poor family, Blake received little in the way of comfort or education while growing up. Amazingly, he did not attend school for very long and dropped out shortly after learning to read and write so that he could work in his father’s shop. The life of a hosier however was not the right path for Blake as he exhibited early on a skill for reading and drawing. Blake’s skill for reading can be seen in his understanding for and use of works such as the Bible and Greek classic literature.

He uses regular rhyme scheme (aa,bb,cc,….) , but the last stanza has no perfectly rhymed end words or scheme which provides a hard sound to create emphasis on Tom’s conditions that the author does not want us to forget. Blake uses sound devices like Alliteration in “cry” (3) and “chimneys” (4) to show the miserable conditions of the chimney sweepers and he uses another Alliteration in “sweep” (4) and “soot” (4) to show the suffering of the boy who sweeps chimneys and sleeps in soot. There is Alliteration in “sleeping” and “sight” (10) which conveys Tom’s strange dream or sight. The poet connects the two words “bare” (7) and “hair” (8) as assonance to show that having a shaved head means Tom's hair won't get messed up by all that black soot. That means something black and dark would mess up and corrupt something white and innocent. There is Another Assonance in “dark” (21) and “harm” (24) to describe how he (Tom) awoke and the two of them grabbed their chimney-sweeping equipment and went off to work really early in the morning. The poet connects the two words “sweep” (4) and “sleep” (4) as consonance to reflect children abuse and the suffering of the labour child who sweeps chimneys and sleeps in soot. There is also a consonance in “night” (9) and “sight” (10) to show how Tom is soothed by the speaker and goes to sleep then he sees his strange dream or

The meaning of the poem A Poison Tree is how hatred can be a powerful weapon that can lead to both physical and mental injuries if not controlled on time. In the first stanza of the poem the speaker gets angry with a friend and a foe. The speaker seizes their wrath with the friend, however, the speaker allowed their wrath to grow with their foe, “I was angry with my foe; / I told it not, my wrath did grow.” Throughout the second stanza, the speaker grows their wrath with mixed emotions, “And I water’d it in fears, / Night & morning with my tears: / And I sunned it with smiles, / And with soft deceitful wiles.” As the speaker kept growing their wrath, it blossomed to form new anger, new tricks and plans for destruction, “And it grew both day