A Poison Tree

Question 1

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

Answer 1

Simple sentences - Easy for target audience younger generation with childlike rhyme

Rhyming couplets - Wants messaging to be memorable and impactful

Anaphora + Active voice - Ownership, responsibility, consciousness of having cultivated own wrath

Personification of wrath - Connotations of intimidation, dominance, lack of control and monstrosity

Wrath - One of the 7 deadly sins

Question 2

And I water’d it in fears
Night and morning with my tears

Answer 2

Temporal marker - cyclical impression of how consuming the speaker’s wrath has become, meticulous, obsessive

Active voice - Ownership, responsibility, consciousness of having cultivated own wrath

Tears - Reflects inner conflict that the persona is going through

Water’d - Religious connotations of baptising, cleansing and spiritual forgiveness, contrasting what the apple symbolises

Question 3

bore an apple bright

Answer 3

bore - Connotations of bearing a child -> Parallels the care and own time and effort spent into the apple
apple - Alludes to Genesis and symbolises sin and death

Question 4

And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine

Answer 4

Manipulates positive perceptions of nature into maliciously enticing prospects through “shine” being a celestial noun

Highlights how all-consuming wrath is, temptation, symbolic of original sin

Mine - Possessive pronoun creates a sense of pride

Enjambment - Highlights the temptation, consuming, speeds up pace -> speeds up the progression of how wrath consumes the persona

Question 5

veil’d the pole

Answer 5

1. Homophone for tree and star
2. Subversion of fate

Question 6

And in the morning glad I see
My foe oustretched beneath the tree.

Answer 6

glad I see - Warning of the dangers of letting wrath fester

Outstretched - Euphemistic, implied death. Painful, contortion, representing how the wrath has hurt the person

End-stopped-line - Reflective of how the wrath has culminated, but challenges the need for the wrath to have reached that extent.

Question 7

Context of Blake’s political alignment

Answer 7

Radical views and he wanted to spread them

Question 8

What book was A Poison Tree published in

Answer 8

Songs of Innocence and Experience

Question 9

What type of poet was Wordsworth

Answer 9

Romantic

Question 10

What is significant about the speaker/persona

Answer 10

First person -> First hand account to further warn readers of the dangers

Parallels the perspective of the serpent that tempted Eve into eating the apple

Unknown and unnamed -> Ambiguity -> Homogeneity, can apply to anyone, nobody is exempt

Question 11

Alternating meter

Answer 11

Trochaic and Iambic Pentameter

Trochaic - Unnatural, not ended lines, wrath is abnormal VS Iambic being natural and completed lines

Highlights how wrath isn’t meant to exist