GCSE-readyA Poison Tree by William Blake: context, form and key methods
A short, simple-looking poem about anger that is hidden instead of spoken, and how it grows into something deadly.
Context and Blake's purpose
An early draft was titled Christian Forbearance: holding back your feelings, which the Church praised. Blake suggests that buried anger is far more dangerous than anger that is spoken.
The apple and the tree echo the Garden of Eden in Genesis, where a forbidden fruit leads to death.
Form and structure
The first stanza sets up a contrast: "I was angry with my friend; / I told my wrath, my wrath did end." With the foe, the speaker "told it not", and the anger grows.
The poem moves through time like a story, from planting to growth to the fruit, and ends with a dead body.
Language and key methods
Symbolism: the "apple bright" is tempting but poisonous, like the fruit in Eden.
The final image is cold and calm: "In the morning glad I see / My foe outstretched beneath the tree." The word glad shocks the reader, because the speaker feels no guilt.
Compare how anger is presented in A Poison Tree and one other poem from Conflict.
- Point: both poems show anger that is hidden and grows.
- Blake (AO2): the extended metaphor of a tree that the speaker waters and suns.
- Partner poem: Cousin Kate, where the speaker's bitterness is held in until the final stanza.
- Context (AO3): Blake questions the religious ideal of holding feelings in; Rossetti shows how Victorian society punished a 'fallen' woman.
Answer: Both Blake and Rossetti show anger that is held in until it becomes dangerous. In A Poison Tree, Blake uses the extended metaphor of a plant that the speaker carefully waters "with tears" and suns "with smiles", which suggests that hatred can be deliberately grown. Similarly, Rossetti's speaker in Cousin Kate holds back her bitterness about the lord who "changed me like a glove" until the final stanza, when she turns on Kate and boasts about her son. However, while Blake's speaker hides his anger behind "soft deceitful wiles" and ends "glad" at his enemy's death, Rossetti's speaker has good reason for her fury, because Victorian society blamed the woman and not the powerful man. Blake warns readers against hidden anger, whereas Rossetti makes us sympathise with it.
Songs of Experience, 1794. Anger spoken ends; anger hidden grows. Extended metaphor of a poison tree; Eden apple; rhyming couplets with a nursery rhyme feel; the speaker is "glad" at the end.
- Context
- The circumstances in which a text was written and set, such as historical events, social attitudes and the writer's life (AO3 in the GCSE, AO4 in the International GCSE).
- Form
- The type and shape of a text: for example sonnet, ballad, free verse, tragedy, comedy, novel or play.
- Extended metaphor
- A metaphor developed over several lines or a whole text.
- Metaphor
- A comparison that says one thing is another, without using 'like' or 'as'.
- Speaker
- The voice of a poem. The speaker is not always the poet.
- Stanza
- A group of lines forming a section of a poem (a verse).
All GCSE and International GCSE English Literature key terms and definitions →
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Last updated 2 October 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix it.