A Poison Tree - A Literary Essay Example

The poem "A Poison Tree" was composed by William Blake a painter and poet in 1794 when it was published from a part of his Songs of Experience collection. The poem gives the ideas of vengeance, fallen state of humanity and indignation. The paper discusses the importance of this verse to the reader.

To start with, we can see the structure and verification in the verses is of full rhyming set of couplets made up of quatrain each. Couplets are merely rhyming pairs. When you form two rhyming couplets, they create a quatrain- four-lined stanza. The poem further uses closing statements that do not accept any argument at all. In each verse, we can see the obsessive drive of the poem by the use of the word And' at the beginning and other part lines which is distinctively emphasized in stanza 2,3 and 4. They first take the unstressed position then secondly take the stressed position. They are referred to as iambic meter, and in our case, we have an iambic tetrameter meaning that we have four iambs. Why we say so the poem created by four stanzas with a rhyming scheme of AABB. In line 1 and 2, the poem's rhyming sound is A and the last two line rhymes with a B.'

The poem gives the reader an illustration of how the poet is restricted to diction. This is coved by language and tone where we can see terms such as friend' foe' and wrath' in the first stanza. The other observable feature is the continuous use of I' at the start of every line hence showing the obsession nature of the speaker in the poem. Other interesting words that follow are my' and mine' along the poem. He has not provided a name to his foe' perhaps he wants us to understand the importance of the relationship between the speaker and not the name. We can see the use of a metaphor from the title of the poem, A Poison Tree," symbolism that is covered here relates to vegetation. It plays a role in bringing a sense of the growth of anger that is cultivated and nurtured inside us that eventually produces a poisonous fruit that harms the speaker's foe.' For trees to grow, they need sun, water, and care, a critical metaphor that is depicted on how anger can grow with churn right from a simple feeling to lethal action that, presumably kill the enemy. In line 5 and six we see the speaker watering his anger with tears and fears that later increases one's anger.

In stanza two the negativity of the speaker is achieved through his true emotional feeling of both fears and tears. All that is false is the the sun of smiles, and the softness of deceitful wiles' is implied in stanza two. We can realize that language here is concealed since we do not see growth till the apple fruit appears where the speaker contrasts with elements of nature such the trees and fruit.

The poet also utilizes imagery where he put words such as, day and night " in line 9 where it indicates that anger is developing all the time be it day or night. The other instance is in line 14, "night had veiled the pole." Where it speaks of the enemy/foe that comes to his garden at night when the pole' which refers to the North Star that guided people to safety was now covered. This is significant to the reader because his anger had to grow to its climax and this is not visible to the speaker and all that is left is darkness. "And I sunned it with smiles," in this line, this is usually the case in our real life since we smile and trick our enemies and at the same time building hatred. Towards the end of the poem as a reader, I can feel the tension that is building up and obviously expecting dire consequence as to what the speaker's enemy would face.

The poem indicates how a friend can forgive and points further how anger can grow with fury towards his enemy. There is the necessity to let go of the anger that can cause harmful and dire consequences because it is repressed inside us. The significance of the poem is illustrated in the first line which gives a way of overcoming our anger by communicating in the right direction.