The speaker suggests that the growth and development of anger is something that happens all the time, both at night and in the daytime. He implies that it is, in effect, a long-term thing that takes over our lives. Lines 5-6: The speaker waters his anger at night and in the morning with fears and tears.

Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things with their five senses. William Blake has used visual imagery throughout the poem to make his reader create a mental picture such as, “And it grew both day and night.” “Till it bore an apple bright”, “My foe outstretched beneath the tree.”

The tree represents anger, which Blake believes is a type of deadly poison. If you take a bite from the poisoned apple, you will die. In this poem, the speaker did not resolve his anger with his foe, as he did with his friend.

A Poison Tree is a short and deceptively simple poem about repressing anger and the consequences of doing so. The speaker tells of how they fail to communicate their wrath to their foe and how this continues to grow until it develops into poisonous hatred.

The moral lessons in A Poison Tree include the need to be cautious of the motives of others and the ability of others to manipulate the innocent. Furthermore, the reader should recognize evil within himself before it becomes destructive and he is “glad” to see his enemy dead, even though he lured him to his death.

Why is the apple in stanza 3 bright and shiny? It alludes to the temptation of the Garden of Eden. It grows from a concealed wrath.

The speaker does a lot of things to make his “foe” really seem like an enemy. For example, he tells how he (the “foe”) “stole” into his garden, which implies that the enemy has a proclivity (i.e., a tendency toward) for thievery. Ultimately, though, the enemy is the victim of the speaker’s anger-apple.

William Blake’s “A Poison Tree” basically uses two symbols (an apple and a tree) to relate its meaning. The tree represents the growing anger in the speaker’s heart against his enemy and the apple represents the “fruit” of that anger, an action, in the poem, murder.

Stanza 3: ‘And it grew both day and night’ and ’til it bore an apple bright’ are meaning that his illusion with his enemy is growing and growing until it became a strong and tempting thing. His illusion has a metaphor and it is an apple.

The enemy had stolen the apple during the night when it was dark as the “pole” – the North Star was all covered up. Thus, the star was not visible-to guide the enemy out of the danger. The enemy eats the apple and most probably – he dies.

The apple symbolizes the speaker’s anger, and his plan with his enemy. The enemy sees the apple like this because the speaker has hidden his poison anger beneath the shiny, smiling surface. Lines 13-16. The enemy sees the anger apple in the speaker’s garden.

Since the apple represents human enmity and resentment, the line ‘And he knew that it was mine’ resonates with bitter irony, because in actual fact both the foe and the speaker fail to realise that the poisoned apple has infected both of them, and belongs to them jointly. Their mutual hatred has corrupted them both.

A Poison Tree is a poem that focuses on the emotion of anger and the consequences for our relationships should that anger be suppressed. It deals with the darker side of the human psyche. The enemy or foe ends up under the tree, destroyed by the speaker’s pent up anger.

The devastation between the relationship of the two friends was represented as the poison tree that kept growing throughout the poem. The poison refers to the hatred, and the tree was the growing factor in the relationship. So the “poison tree” was the growing of hatred in the poem.

The extended metaphor is comparing anger to a plant (the poison tree of the title). The process of cultivating one’s emotions (as seen in the line ” And I watered it in fears”) is compared to cultivating a plant. The emotion is followed through an entire growth cycle, until it blossoms into death.

This extended metaphor helps to give a greater understanding as to how the anger of the speaker grows. It grows like a plant, a tree. Also, it bores an apple that is the seed, or root, of the speaker’s poison. A Poison Tree is an extended metaphor for the anger of the speaker.

The lesson we can learn from the outcome of this poem is that it is healthier, if we are angry, to talk to someone about it than to keep our angry feelings buried inside. This lesson is summed up in the first stanza of the poem.

‘A Poison Tree’ depicts a conflict between a speaker and their foe, highlighting the consequences which arise following the suppression of anger. Blake emphasises the idea that emotions should be expressed rather than contained, an innovative and controversial stance at the time.

“A Poison Tree” was written to indicate that Blake believed that suppressing anger based on the teaching of the Church would only enhance the resentment felt by the person. The original title of the poem was “Christian Forbearance. The English government forbid radical action and began to persecute the dissenters.