'A Poison Tree'

This poem is important because it has a universal message and it’s constructed in a way that supports the storyline. In this poem, the speaker is first angry with their friend, who they confront and relinquish their wrath, and is then angry with an enemy, who the speaker does not confront, and therefore their wrath grows. The speaker cries about the wrath, which makes it build even stronger, but he conceals this with smiles and tricks the enemy into thinking everything is ok. Eventually this anger creates a poisonous apple that the enemy eats and dies from. I think the message is to “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” The key stanza of this poem is the first one: “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.” We don’t know why the speaker was angry with these people; maybe what the friend did was easily forgivable, while what the enemy did was inexcusable. All we know is that the speaker presented his anger to his friend, talked it out, moved on, etc., but kept his anger concealed from his enemy. By giving the foe a false sense of security (“And I sunned it with smiles”), the speaker was actually one step ahead of them because he was able to manipulate (“And with soft deceitful wiles”) the enemy to win / pay revenge. The poem has an AABB rhyme scheme and every line is either seven or eight syllables long, so ‘A Poison Tree’ has a beat and is calculated, just like the speaker’s actions toward his enemy are.