A Poison Tree

• “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”
• “Grew both day and night/ till it bore an apple bright”
• “And into my garden stole”
• “My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree”
• • Blake - early part of Romantic Movement
  • He protested against social injustices & negative effects of Industrial Revolution
  • Blake said his ideal reader was a child (didactic poem) – so he used simple language
  • Blake was religious – uses the apple as a symbol of the Christian allusion to “Original Sin” – Tree of Knowledge in the Bible – believed we are all born with evil – but we need to stop it taking over