What does the poem “A Poison Tree” talk about?
mrs-campbell Teacher High School – 11th Grade eNotes Editor This is a very interesting poem that has a thought-provoking moral at the end of it. Basically, the speaker of the poem describes two scenarios: the first is where he was upset with someone, told that person about it, and then the incident was over and done with: “I was angry with my friend:/I told my wrath, my wrath did end.” So, the point here is that when you are upset with someone, it is good to talk about it, to end the matter and move on. The second scenario he describes is when he was angry with someone and kept his wrath within him instead of speaking about it; as a result, it “did grow”. He thought about his anger more and more, and he nurtured it. He “waterd it in fears,” dwelling on his anger and fears, and tried to hid it as he “sunned it with smiles.” The wrath becomes so large and noticable that Blake uses a metaphor of an apple growing from a tree to describe how it feels to him; it is an apple poisoned with his
