A Poison Tree

• A Poison Tree was written by William Blake in 1794.
• Blake was a romantic poet who was religious and rebellious however he wasn't as popular as Wordsworth.
• The unresolved conflict grew from the couples wrath of eachother.
• It is a didactic poem-to teach a moral lesson.
• It is a conflict poem about wrath.
• Blake hated the Church of England but he loved the bible. The poem is like a parable.
• The poem is related to the story of the Garden of Eden -wrath used in the bible.
• The theme is wrath will grow if you allow it to stay inside and wrath is the stem of all conflict
• It shows the consequences of untold anger through an extended metaphor
• It uses four line (quatrain) stanzas and a AABB rhyming couplet structure.
• The rhyming couplets emphasises the rhythm and makes the aim of the poem clear to the audience.
• He uses caesura to emphasise that anger may return
• He endstops the poem to emphasise the rhyme: "my wrath did end."
• He uses an alternating rhythm using trochaic trimeter for lines 1 and 3 and iambic tetrameter 2 and 4 to create a conflict.
• It sounds like a dark nursery rhyme as it needs to be a lesson for children
• It has anaphora "I was angry" to suggest it happens a lot.
• The use of colons are like equals (=) signs to show to logical easy way to understand.
• Sibilance: "sunned it with smiles"
• The undercover lie of "deceitful wiles"
• Anger is all consuming, obsessing: "Night and morning"
• Hot rage "apple bright"
• Plosive alliteration of the "B" sound: "Till it bore an apple bright;/And my foe beheld it shine,"
• "I watered it in fears/ Night and day, with my tears."
• Polysyndeton of "and" being childlike
• The last two lines changed the tense from past to present.