"A Poison Tree" by William Blake

Summary and Analysis

Blake originally gave ‘A Poison Tree’ the title ‘Christian Forbearance’. In summary, the speaker
of the poem tells us that when he was angry with his friend he simply told his friend that he was
annoyed, and that put an end to his bad feeling. But when he was angry with his enemy, he didn’t
air his grievance to this foe, and so the anger grew.

In the second stanza, Blake turns to the central, title metaphor of his poem, likening his anger to
a tree that he ‘watered’ with fear and resentment. Then, more curiously, he says that the false
‘smiles’ he put on whenever he saw his enemy acted like sunlight helping a tree to grow: by
bottling up his anger he made it worse, and by putting on ‘soft deceitful wiles’ (i.e. tricks and
cover-ups to hide his true feelings), his anger continued to grow and morphed into something
more devious: the need for vengeance.

Why? The implication of this ‘poison tree’ is that anger and hatred start to eat away at oneself:
hatred always turns inward, corrupting into self-hatred. Because the speaker was forced to hide
his anger, it made him act in a deceitful and false way, and thus his anger for his friend led him
to despise himself for being driven to act deceitfully.

In this third stanza, an apple sprouts from this poison tree of anger. This ‘apple bright’ attracts
the attention of his enemy, who then sneaked into the speaker’s garden one night and ate the
apple from this tree; when the speaker finds his enemy the next morning, his foe is lying dead
under the tree, having eaten the poisoned fruit.

This powerful and curious little poem is about the power of anger to become corrupted into
something far more deadly and devious if it is not aired honestly. The enemy may have stolen the
apple (and trespassed on the speaker’s property – he ‘stole’ into his garden, after all), but he was
deceived into thinking that something deadly and poisonous (the speaker’s anger) was something
nice and tasty (the apple).

What are we to make of this rather involved metaphor? One possible interpretation is as follows:
Blake is saying that repressing our righteous anger makes us scheme into finding underhand
ways to get back at our enemies, and – consciously or unconsciously – we end up setting traps
for our enemies in order to bring them down.

The apple represents such wily and devious vengeance: it is significant that it is an apple that
grows from Blake’s poison tree, and that the speaker’s enemy steals the apple, because this
conjures up the Genesis story of Adam and Eve being deceitfully persuaded to eat the fruit from
the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. Satan, disguised as a serpent, is the one responsible for
cajoling Eve into eating the fruit, which is commonly depicted as an apple, like the apple in
Blake’s poem. The Fall of Adam and Eve takes place, of course, in the paradise that is the
Garden of Eden; Blake’s Edenic ‘garden’ is where his enemy meets his end. These parallels raise
Blake’s parable of repressed anger and vengeance to Biblical heights
Stanza Wise Summary:

‘A Poison Tree’, one of the most famous poems by William Blake (1757-1827), was first
published in Blake’s 1794 volume Songs of Experience. Below we offer some words of analysis
on this classic poem.

Blake originally gave ‘A Poison Tree’ the title ‘Christian Forbearance’. In summary, the speaker
of the poem tells us that when he was angry with his friend he simply told his friend that he was
annoyed, and that put an end to his bad feeling. But when he was angry with his enemy, he didn’t
air his grievance to this foe, and so the anger grew.

In the second stanza, Blake turns to the central, title metaphor of his poem, likening his anger to
a tree that he ‘watered’ with fear and resentment. Then, more curiously, he says that the false
‘smiles’ he put on whenever he saw his enemy acted like sunlight helping a tree to grow: by
bottling up his anger he made it worse, and by putting on ‘soft deceitful wiles’ (i.e. tricks and
cover-ups to hide his true feelings), his anger continued to grow and morphed into something
more devious: the need for vengeance.

Why? The implication of this ‘poison tree’ is that anger and hatred start to eat away at oneself:
hatred always turns inward, corrupting into self-hatred. Because the speaker was forced to hide
his anger, it made him act in a deceitful and false way, and thus his anger for his friend led him
to despise himself for being driven to act deceitfully.

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.

In this third stanza, an apple sprouts from this poison tree of anger. This ‘apple bright’ attracts
the attention of his enemy, who then sneaked into the speaker’s garden one night and ate the
apple from this tree; when the speaker finds his enemy the next morning, his foe is lying dead
under the tree, having eaten the poisoned fruit.

This powerful and curious little poem is about the power of anger to become corrupted into
something far more deadly and devious if it is not aired honestly. The enemy may have stolen the
apple (and trespassed on the speaker’s property – he ‘stole’ into his garden, after all), but he was
deceived into thinking that something deadly and poisonous (the speaker’s anger) was something
nice and tasty (the apple).

What are we to make of this rather involved metaphor? One possible interpretation is as follows:
Blake is saying that repressing our righteous anger makes us scheme into finding underhand
ways to get back at our enemies, and – consciously or unconsciously – we end up setting traps
for our enemies in order to bring them down.

The apple represents such wily and devious vengeance: it is significant that it is an apple that
grows from Blake’s poison tree, and that the speaker’s enemy steals the apple, because this
conjures up the Genesis story of Adam and Eve being deceitfully persuaded to eat the fruit from
the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. Satan, disguised as a serpent, is the one responsible for
cajoling Eve into eating the fruit, which is commonly depicted as an apple, like the apple in
Blake’s poem. The Fall of Adam and Eve takes place, of course, in the paradise that is the
Garden of Eden; Blake’s Edenic ‘garden’ is where his enemy meets his end. These parallels raise
Blake’s parable of repressed anger and vengeance to Biblical heights.

‘A Poison Tree’ is one of English literature’s most striking explorations of the corrupting effects
of anger. It is one of William Blake’s miniature masterpieces.

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"Break, break, break" by Tennyson

Summary and Analysis

The sea is breaking on the “cold gray stones” before the speaker. He laments that he cannot give
voice to his thoughts. Yes, the fisherman’s boy shouts with his sister while they play, and the
young sailor sings in his boat, but the speaker cannot express such joy. Other ships travel silently
into port, their “haven under the hill,” and this observation seems to remind him of the
disappearance of someone he cared for. No longer can he feel the person’s touch or hear the
person’s voice. Unlike the waves, which noisily “break, break, break” on the rocks as they
repeatedly come in, the “tender grace” of bygone days will never return to him.

Analysis
This short poem carries the emotional impact of a person reflecting on the loss of someone he (or
she) cared for. Written in 1834 right after the sudden death of Tennyson’s friend Arthur Henry
Hallam, the poem was published in 1842. Although some have interpreted the speaker’s grief as
sadness over a lost lover, it probably reflects the feeling at any loss of a beloved person in death,
like Tennyson’s dejection over losing Hallam.

The poem is four stanzas of four lines each, each quatrain in irregular iambic tetrameter. The
irregularity in the number of syllables in each line might convey the instability of the sea or the
broken, jagged edges of the speaker’s grief. Meanwhile, the ABCB rhyme scheme in each stanza
may reflect the regularity of the waves.

On the surface, the poem seems relatively simple and straightforward, and the feeling is easy to
discern: the speaker wishes he could give voice to his sad thoughts and his memories, to move
and speak like the sea and others around him. The poem’s deeper interest is in the series of
comparisons between the external world and the poet’s internal world. The outer world is where
life happens, or where it used to happen for the speaker. The inner world is what preoccupies
him now, caught up in deep pain and loss and the memories of a time with the one who is gone.

For example, in the first stanza, the sea is battering the stones. The speaker appears frustrated
that the sea can keep moving and making noise while he is unable to utter his thoughts. The sea’s
loud roar, its ability to vent its energy, is something he lacks. The repetition of “break” aptly
conveys the ceaseless motion of the waves, each wave reminding him of what he lacks.

In the second stanza, Tennyson similarly expresses distance between himself and the happy
people playing or singing where they are. They possess joy and fulfillment, whether together or
alone, but he does not. The brother and sister have each other; the sailor has his boat; the speaker
is alone. They have reason to voice pleasure, but he does not. One might sense envy here, but
“O, well” also suggests that these blithe young people have losses yet to come.

In the third stanza the poet sees the “stately ships” moving to their “haven under the hill,” either
to port or over the horizon. Either way, they seem content with a destination. But the mounded
grave is no pleasant haven, in contrast. That end means the end of activity; there is no more hand
to touch, no more voice to hear. Again the speaker is caught up in his internal thoughts, his
memory of the mourned figure overshadowing what the speaker sees around him. The critic H.
Sopher also interprets the contrast in this stanza as such: “The stateliness of the ships contrasts
with the poet’s emotional imbalance; and the ships move forward to an attainable goal ... while
the poet looks back to a ‘vanish’d hand’ and a ‘voice that is still.’”
In the fourth stanza, the speaker returns to the breaking of waves on the craggy cliffs. The waves
come again, again, again, hitting a wall of rock each time. But for him there is no return of the
dead, just the recurring pain of loss. Why speak, why act? Sopher explains that “the poet’s
realization of the fruitlessness of action draws the reader’s attention to the fact that the sea’s
action is, seemingly, fruitless too—for all its efforts [it] can no more get beyond the rocks than
the poet can restore the past.” Nevertheless, both the sea and the speaker continue with their
useless but repeated actions, as though there is no choice. The scene evokes a sense of
inevitability and hopelessness.

While the feeling here could involve merely the loss of a romantic relationship, it seems more
poignant if the speaker has no hope for the return of the one who is lost. Without a death, there is
no opportunity to connect the “hill” to a mounded grave, the “still” voice would be harder to
interpret, and the “day that is dead” would be a weaker metaphor.

Stanza Wise Summary:

The first stanza of the poem Break, Break, Break, by Alfred Lord Tennyson presents the picture
of the poet sitting near his friend's grave on the sea-beach as he says “Break Break, Break, On
thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in
me”.

He is full of grief at the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam. He observes the waves striking
against the rocks. The poet sees the sea-waves rising, advancing and striking against the rocks.
The rock-bound sea-beach is hard and would not melt in response. The poet feels that just as the
sea is unable to express its sorrow, he himself is unable to do so. His sorrow is too deep for
words. It is overwhelming, and in spite of his desire to give vent to it, he feels tongue-tied. The
thoughts, which rise in the poet's heart, cannot find expression in words. Here we note a contrast
between the waves which rise and strike against the rocks, and the poet's thoughts which arise
and remain unexpressed.
In these four lines, Tennyson reflects on the connection between the sea and himself. The sea
breaks up on rocks much as the poet's thoughts seem to break up on his tongue before he can
explain how he feels. This connection between the sea and the poet is reinforced by the fact that
"Sea" rhymes with "me." In addition, the two lines about the sea and the two lines about the poet
have the same three-beat rhythm. Tennyson could have directly stated how he felt by writing
something like: "I wish I could tell you how rotten I feel today." By using poetry, however,
Tennyson helped his readers both understand and feel how he felt.

Stanza 2. O well …… on the bay! The idea is that there may be gloom in life the world at large,
and specially the community of children is not seized with gloom. The merry-go-round of
humanity continues uninterrupted. The grief of the poet becomes all the more poignant at the
sight of cheerfulness of the fisherman's boy.

Stanza 3. And the stately ships ….. that is still! The poet imagines to be on the sea-shore near
the spot where his dead dear friend lies buried. He observes that the life in the place is going on
as usual. The fisherman's children and the sailor's boy are in a playful and pleasant mood. The
ships coming from abroad are proceeding to their harbour below the hill to rest and pack
themselves for further voyage. Thus, the trend of worldly life shows no signs of slackness or
sadness. Only the poet is sad because his bosom-friend, Arthur Hallam, is dead, and the poet is
deprived of his company and mutual conversation for good.

Stanza 4. Break, break, break ……… come back to me. These lines constitute the fourth stanza
of the poem "Break, Break, Break", by Lord Tennyson. The poet is lamenting the death of his
friend Arthur Hallam. He is standing near the spot of his friend's burial on the sea-shore. Seeing
the waves of the sea beating against the rocks the poet feels that the sea might express its grief by
lashing the coastal stones, but he himself would never enjoy the tender beauty of the days when
his friend was alive.

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TEACHER – by P.Sheshadri

P. Sheshadri (born 23 November 1963) is an Indian film director who works in Kannada
cinema. A postgraduate in Kannada Literature and a diploma holder in journalism, after a short
stint as Journalist, he entered Film land in 1990 as Screenplay and dialogue writer. In 1995 he
became Independent Director of Television serials, Documentaries and Tele films. His maiden
effort as Director of feature film MUNNUDI (A Preface) in the year 2000 has brought him great
applause for his sensitive approach to cinema and was also hailed as a landmark film. He is the
first director to receive eight consecutive National Awards.

In the given poem P. Sheshadri diverts from his media world to the realms of education. A
Teacher has one of the most challenging and most meaningful jobs in the world. Each day they
help students navigate the path to adulthood and shape them in ways that often go
unappreciated. The special bond that forms between a teacher and a student, when forged
properly lasts beyond the classroom, is one of the most fundamentally fulfilling relationships one
can have. The hallmark of a successful teacher, is one who is able to instill the thirst for
knowledge in his/her students. In order to achieve this tremendous task the teacher toils in the
“halls of learning”- mostly unappreciated – to attract the ever wandering and over active mind of
the student to their books. The wide variety of negative feedbacks, insults or discouragements
does not deter him/her from their task.

For all the thankless work and efforts that s/he puts in, the teacher does not expect any monetary
or materialistic reward from either the student or society. S/he is more than happy to watch from
the sidelines as the student render them obsolete growing up and taking their due place in the
world. And in the midst of their life if the ever pause to recollect the teachings of their long
forgotten and unappreciated teacher, it would be the greatest reward the world could give. To fade
into the background and watch students gain joy, knowledge and wisdom from what they have
learnt and subsequently passing the baton forward to the next generation is the dream of the
teacher.

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