"A Poison Tree"

Paper Summary:

"A Poison Tree" by William Blake is a poem which explores the balance of innocence (the speaker's relationship with the friend) and experience (the speaker's relationship with the foe). This paper discusses how the poem contrasts anger and fear as well as religious beliefs and friendship.

From the Paper:

"The third stanza contains words such as night, bright, shine and mine which also present contrast, the contrast throughout the poem is very important as it creates a "stormy" environment or background and it manages to emphasise the difference between foe and anger and innocence and experience. Finally the last stanza is pretty similar to the first one. There is a dramatic contrast between the simplicity of the language and the complexity of the ideas that the poem expresses and implies. There is an ironic contrast between the use of a natural metaphor such as the tree to express an unnatural phenomenon such as the repression of anger. Contrast becomes also evident between words such as night and morning, which moreover may represent purity and evil, or the beginning and the end of times or life. "

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