Summary OfThe Poison Tree, And A Poison Tree By William Blake

social and religious standards of her time in regards to gender, just as William Blake sets out to

Sun-flower,” and “The Lilly.” Wolfson argues that these three poems “tell a tale in three chapters,” (266) however each poem stands beautifully on its own only loosely an affiliated trilogy of different aspects of love. From plate 43, these short lyrics involve the personification of flowers. Often characterized for their delicateness and beauty, symbolizing love, and female sexuality, Blake uses botany to again establish a sense of sexual relationship within the poem. “My Pretty Rose Tree ” is constructed in two heroic quatrains written with an ABAB ACAC rhyme scheme. The speaker describes their temptation in being offered another flower (opportunity or other woman) as well as their protestation that he has his own “pretty rose tree” (Blake, Rose Tree 3) and does not need another. The outcome of his fidelity personifies the already feminized and objectified rose tree as jealous and dependent on the speaker for “tend[ing]” (6). In the trees jealousy, she only provides her barren “thorns” (8) for the speaker’s efforts in which he states is his “only delight” (8). Suggesting that the only delight a woman is capable of is the physical appearance. The thorns take on the Biblical symbolism of the crown of thorns in which Jesus wears up to his crucifixion to cause him pain and to mock his claim for authority. Similarly, the rose tree mocks the speaker’s possessive authority over her (as he

The poem, “A Poison Tree,” by William Blake, and the short story, “Enemies, by Tim O’Brien share a theme that suppressing anger and wrath may lead to a violent result. One can learn this theme through the poem’s first person point of view and the story’s omniscient narrator.

The deranged, but brilliant Edgar Allan Poe once said “The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls...” Poe’s notions of the evil within are found in both “The Cask Of Amontillado” by Poe, and “A Poison Tree” by William Blake. The authors write about how revenge can create this insane creature within that will only settle for betrayal and destruction. For example, the speakers in both features are wronged by someone and their way of handling it is deceitful murder. The killers on the outside are characterized as calm people; while on the inside, they are characterized truly as people who enjoy watching those who “deserve it” suffer. Poe and Blake use characterization to convey a theme that man takes violent revenge when they are wronged.

The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of

Edward Taylor’s Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children and Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold are similar in their approach with the illustration of how beautiful and magnificent God’s creations are to humankind. However, each poem presents tragic misfortune, such as the death of his own children in Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children and the cold, enigmatic nature of human soul in Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold. Taylor’s poems create an element of how cruel reality can be, as well as manifest an errant correlation between earthly life and spiritual salvation, which is how you react to the problems you face on earth determines the salvation that God has in store for you.

The main character Melinda has stopped growing and changing, which leads to her being depressed. This is shown when Melinda states, “My tree is hopeless” (page 152). This quote does not only tell how Melinda changes due to being quiet, but it also relates to the speaker in “A Poison Tree”. These two stories relate because in “A Poison Tree” the speakers identity is also changing just like Melindas, and he also suffers in the end from not speaking up by becoming evil. Melinda feels that she is the “screwed-up ninth-grader” by not talking at all, which made others think she needed “professional help” (Page 105 & 153). This tells the reader that Melinda thinks the is useless and also an outcast. This is the “poison” that Melinda drinks and the poison that the speaker drink in “A Poison Tree” makes them evil. Even though these are two different emotions they still got poisoned from not engaging in conversations. The use of “poison” indicates that both main characters can be effected from something so toxic that it can change there whole perspective of the

In the tenth line of Blake’s poem, he uses a metaphor “Till it bore an apple bright,” to symbolize the blossoming of his anger. It is noteworthy that the apple is taking on a being of its own, and it also shows the substantial amount of energy it holds. The apple represents all of the suppression of frustration or anger that the speaker has for his enemy. He never releases whatever problem he had with his enemy off his chest, so instead of expressing his thought like he did with his friend, and working it out together, his anger and bitterness slowly grew. Now, the tree is no longer a figure of speech, but it actually produces an offspring and an entity in its own.

Both Gerald Manley Hopkins and William Blake explore the conflicts between one’s opinions and the faith which they devoutly believe. The poems The Garden of Love and Hopkins’ Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord each show the persona doubting the philosophical qualms of life surrounding Catholicism and whether spending “life upon thy cause,” is meaningful. As a child, Blake read the Bible to enhance his reading skills, however developed views correlating to the Swedenborgian church which holds the Catholic church’s views without the institutionalised feeling which Blake despised of in Catholicism. The Garden of Love intertwines his beliefs into the poetry, as depicted with the strong imagery between the vibrant childhood memory of the surroundings in comparison to the older man’s views. However,

Blake begins the poem by stating that it is not possible to love another as much as yourself, and that thought is the highest of all human functions. This sets the stage for Blake's attack on religion's ideas of hierarchy and condemnation of rational thought. The next stanza describes the boy asking God, indicated by the capitalized "Father," how he could love him or another human more than a little bird picking up crumbs. The boy states that he loves God in and as much as a little bird. This echoes the naturalist ideas supported in the aforementioned poems. Blake seems to be saying that the proper way to worship and commune with God is by loving all natural beings, human and non-human. The priest, a symbol of organized religion that Blake so sharply critiques, overhears what the boy is saying and is infuriated by the idea that a person could worship God through nature, without ritual, politics, or human involvement, and that the boy dares use his mind to question what he has been taught. The priest makes the boy a martyr, preaching from his high pedestal of pomposity, and burns the boy, despite the cries of his family. The boy's curiosity and natural thinking have been squelched, and his imagination bound in iron chains. Blake closes the poem by asking if such

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.

The poem is metaphorical in nature. The title ‘poison tree’ is a metaphor used to describe anger which is a harmful emotion, likened to poison. The apple fruit, borne from the watered poison tree, depicts revenge. Once the poison tree was all grown it bore the apple fruit which was an evil plan of vengeance.

Blake writes, "And his dark secret love, does thy life destroy". This love Blake is expressing is one that has died a quiet, slow and painful death, as most love does. Furthermore, this passage conveys a double meaning, since the term "dark secret love" portrays love and sexuality in general as a form of violence. For instance, the imagery of the poem paints love and sexuality as a form of emotional and physical violence. Blake could be describing physical forms of sexual violence, such as rape, forced incest and pedophilia. Blake could also be referring to emotional violence. For instance, adultery, rejection and jealousy are a painful form of psychological violence. To clarify, Blake postulates in this stanza that sexuality breaks the morality of a society, leading to violence. When the morality of a society breaks, then religious and government officials have less control, and this is what Blake wanted. In Blake's view, our society should not fear the harmless, beautiful rose that is sexuality and

To understand what is being said in such poems as "THE GARDEN OF LOVE" and "The Little Vagabond" one must consider the poet's religious, or shall I say spiritual, position. William Blake considered himself to be a monistic Gnostic. That is, he believed what saved a person's soul was not faith but knowledge. Faith, he felt, was a term that was abused by those who thought spending every Sunday in a church would grant them eternal salvation regardless of what actions they exhibited outside the walls of the church. Church ceremonies were also dry, emotionless and meaningless, according to Blake. Church was evil, as Blake would have put it.

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