The Antidote – Classic Poetry for Today

Are you bearing a grudge? This poem by Blake reminds us that we damage no one more than ourselves when we refuse to let go of our anger.

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.

Do you find it easy to forgive? Or is it simply too tempting to simmer with righteous fury, either in the belief that you occupy the moral high ground, or because you consider an open, honest declaration of anger is always destructive? In Blake’s poem, it is the stifling of anger that proves deadly. Spoken, and thus shared, it goes. Whatever problem we may have with a friend is resolved. By withholding our fury we simply hold on to it.

For the “I” of the poem, apparent magnanimity turns into monomania, as night and day he feeds and waters the seed of his dispute until it becomes all-consuming. The more it grows, the more he is forced into grotesque, smarmy contortions to pretend that nothing is wrong. As with Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, his public and private selves are eerily fractured. A paragon of “appropriate behavior,” he’s as soft and deceitful as a snake.

The very snake, it seems, that according to the Bible tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden to disobey God and eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, leads to Adam and Eve being cast out of paradise. In Genesis the serpent is described as the craftiest of God’s creatures, though tradition later made it into the Devil. In the poem, the poison tree of the speaker’s hatred stands in a hellish inversion of Eden, in a world governed by evil.

Here, the garden is also a symbol of whatever grows from our actions, whatever view of reality we nurture, and becomes our habitual perspective. This reminds me of the opening of the Buddhist text, “The Dhammapada”: “We are what we think… With our thoughts we make the world.” Blake forces us to ask what kind of garden we’re planting each day with our thoughts, words and deeds. What blossoms at the center: a poison tree or a tree of life?

The apple shines: lush, fragrant, seductive. Blinded by greed, the enemy steals into the garden for a bite… and night falls. Even the pole star is extinguished. The absence of this navigational aid to find true north represents the loss of all moral bearings. Hope is gone. When light returns, a murder scene is revealed. The foe has eaten the apple and died. Do we cheer or gasp? Do we rejoice in his fate or see him as a victim of a more cunning opponent?

The suggestion of nakedness in his “outstretched” state suggests he has passed into prelapsarian innocence. No longer a stereotype of evil, his innate human frailty is revealed, and with it his capacity for goodness. When we harbor anger towards people, we build them up into monsters, when in fact they’re just ordinary, struggling creatures like ourselves.

The speaker’s pleasure at the death of his adversary has a dark, gloating venom that pitches the poem into utter nightmare. In his childlike singsong manner, we hear the motiveless malignity of the Biblical Satan, Shakespeare’s Iago, or a serial killer like Jack the Ripper. The insistent rhyme and breathless repetition of “and” evoke the slippery slide from quarrel to homicide.

Anger isn’t wrong. It’s what you do with it that matters. Say the first stanza out loud and feel the authority of Blake’s curt moral code. Memorize just these four lines—as profound as a Biblical parable and as memorable as an advertising jingle—and you’ll have a lifelong reminder of the perils of resentment. It leaves us too with a tantalizing possibility: Perhaps if we were to share our anger with our perceived foe, he or she might just become our friend.

William Blake (1757-1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. He proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th century. He lived and died in poverty.

Christopher Nield is a poet and freelance writer living in London.