Page 277 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes 26.3 William Blake: Songs of Experience

26.3.1 A Poison Tree

Text
I was angry with my friend.
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe.
I told it not, my wrath did grow;
And I water’d it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles;
And it grew both day and night
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veil’d the pole.
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
“A Poison Tree” is one of the lesser-known of the twenty-six poems William Blake published in 1793
as Songs of Experience, which also contains “The Tyger,” “Ah, Sun-flower,” and “London.” Songs of
Experience is the companion volume to Blake’s Songs of Innocence, published in 1789. Blake printed
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in one volume in 1794, adding the descriptive subtitle
“Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” One of the best sources of “A Poison Tree” is
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (1982), edited by David V. Erdman and published
by Doubleday.
In the poems of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, Blake contrasts how the human spirit
blossoms when allowed its own free movement, which he calls a state of “innocence,” and how it
turns in on itself after it has been suppressed and forced to conform to rules, systems, and doctrines,
which he calls a state of “experience.” The two states recall one of the principal events in the Judeo-
Christian story, the fall from innocence caused by Adam and Eve when they eat fruit from the
forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. The poison tree of Blake’s
poem suggests that biblical tree.

Comment of Blake’s use of the ballad form.

Although it can be read by itself, “A Poison Tree” benefits significantly from being read as a further
expression of the poems immediately preceding it in Songs of Experience, especially “The Garden

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