Essay on The Message Behind "A Poison Tree"

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,

The imagery described in stanza 3 appears to revisit the stages of the speaker’s life. The school where the children are at recess symbolizes her childhood. “Fields of Gazing Grain” in line 11 implies a ripe harvest; perhaps the middle stages of her life when she was most productive. In the final line of the third quatrain, the “Setting Sun” is not only a reflection of the end of a day but also the end of speaker’s life. Perhaps it is the chilling thought of death that brings a revelation to the narrator about the thin, sheer garment she is

Such detail put into the description of these catacombs cause the reader to ponder the awful, and rancid areas that succumbing to your inner rage can take you. Revenge to Montresor brings him through “walls of piled bones”(376), in which to a reader, can thoroughly terrify them and pressure them into not ending up the same way, or not letting their instincts conquer their conscious. Blake uses a very similar imagery, the pleasing display of someone who has fallen due to unsuppressed vengeance. The main character of “A Poison Tree” endures a very conflicting time, a time where his rage becomes a small sapling and he “water’d it in fears”, “sunned it with smiles” till finally his rage was ready and strong enough to explode. This man’s rage envelops him and he finally pleases his rage and murders his enemy, leading to the image of his “foe outstretched below the tree”, otherwise known as the blossomed tree of his revenge. The eventual image of his murdered foe blissfully outstretched below the main character's rage is very difficult to read and imagine without the discouragement of be pushed that far as well, even while that anger may not end in such drastic measures. Describing the scene of the foe below his metaphorical tree put fear into the reader, and makes it clear that the author is attempting the discourage the reader from

The poem at first comes off as a simple poem about spring and winter, but there are many hidden meanings as well. As well as the fear of the end of the world.

Blake wanted people to read this poem and understand his concept of questioning God, for how could God make something so innocent and pure as the Lamb and then in turn make something so evil? The situation is very similar to the

The poem begins with the poet noticing the beauty around her, the fall colors as the sun sets “Their leaves and fruits seemed painted, but was true, / Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue;” (5-6). The poet immediately relates the effects of nature’s beauty to her own spiritual beliefs. She wonders that if nature here on Earth is so magnificent, then Heaven must be more wonderful than ever imagined. She then views a stately oak tree and

A popular characteristic in many of Blake’s poems is the inclusion of biblical allusions to convey meaning. In his poem “A Poison Tree”, Blake uses anaphora, diction, and symbol to allow biblical allusions that depicts the evil that man is capable to come into being. Anaphora is the usage of the same word or phrase at the beginning of every consecutive line. In stanza one, the word ‘I’ begins every line, and later on the word ‘and’ is used seven times to signify the start of some of the lines. The poem is organized in a way that immediately starts off using anaphora and since anaphora is mainly

The poem “A Poison Tree” by William Blake discusses human nature’s true form. Someone who is furious with a friend would obviously want to mend the friendship, so they let their anger simmer. However, someone who is upset with an enemy has no reason to tell him or herself to not be mad because all they are to you is an enemy. Therefore, your hatred eventually takes over and you do something dreadful. This literary composition shows the readers how anger can take a toll in two different directions. The poet writes with such ease, that it makes us readers believe he’s gone through it already.

In the poem “After Apple-Picking”, Robert Frost has cleverly disguised many symbols and allusions to enhance the meaning of the poem. One must understand the parallel to understand the central theme of the poem. The apple mentioned in the poem could be connected to the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. It essentially is the beginning of everything earthly and heavenly, therefore repelling death. To understand the complete meaning of Frost’s poem one needs to be aware that for something to be dead, it must have once had life. Life and death are common themes in poetry, but this poem focuses on what is in between, life’s missed experiences and the regret that the speaker is left with.

Blake uses traditional symbols of angels and devils, animal imagery, and especially images of fire and flame to: 1) set up a dual world, a confrontation of opposites or "contraries" which illustrate how the rules of Reason and Religion repress and pervert the basic creative energy of humanity, 2) argues for apocalyptic transformation of the self "through the radical regeneration of each person's own power to imagine" (Johnson/Grant, xxiv), and 3) reconstructs Man in a new image, a fully realized Man who is both rational and imaginative, partaking of his divinity through creativity. The form of the poem consists of "The Argument," expositions on his concepts of the "contraries" and of "expanded perception" which are both interspersed with "Memorable Fancies" that explicate and enlarge on his expositions, and concludes with "A Song of Liberty," a prophecy of a future heaven on earth.

The first part of the poem is light and happy, filled with bright images of “holy light” and “sunny beams” (8, 9). However, the maiden and her mate agree to meet the following night, a foredooming of their fateful friendship, as when the girl approaches her father his “loving look, / Like the holy book, / All her tender limbs with terror shook” (27-29). Suddenly the poem shifts to dark imagery, “when the silent sleep / Waves o’er heavens deep” (22-23). The innocent maiden who was earlier “bright” and happy is described as “pale and weak” after her father’s reprimand (7, 30). The earlier word “bright” described her blissful innocence, while “pale” denotes the fear imbued in her and the wickedness associated with her earlier innocent play. Blake accuses Christian society as the “assassin of innocence” in the young couple (Trowbridge, 140). The church, in the form of a father figure, is being critically attacked by Blake via the children’s harmless affair.

Nature was a theme factoring in many of his works and Blake associates nature with different elements in these poems and we find that nature is seen in communion with God in the introductory poem and throughout these poems Blake points out the relationship and harmony between Man and Nature, children and Nature and he also talks about sex in Nature in `The Blossom'.

Throughout the beginning of the poem, Keats touches on the beauty and richness of autumn. He accomplishes this by introducing distinct fall imagery. For example, Keats writes in lines 5 and 6, “To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees; And fill all fruit with the ripeness of to the cores” (414). Having the trees’ branches being bent by the weight of the apples and the fruit being ripe to its core, the narrator points to the plumpness and maturity of the fruit. Typically, fruit reaches this fullness in autumn when it is ready to harvest. Keats uses this delectable and pleasant image of the fruit to not only demonstrate the mouthwatering joys nature has to offer during this season, but to also

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