William Blake - Symbolism in William Blake's Poetry lyrics

WILLIAM BLAKE As a Visionary Poet William Blake (1757-1827) was not a lyrical poet but a great visionary. How visionary As a visionary, he always looks for things beyond what is immediate and palpable. His search for the glories and the terrors of the world of spirit is innate, and Compare unlike Wordsworth who discovers pantheistic entity that is both immanent in and transcendent from the universe, manifest in the gracious spirit of nature, Blake feels with the eye of one who cannot help dreaming dreams and seeing visions. The visionary in him may and will overpower the artist, and a wild confusion of imagery often blurs his work whether as a draughtsman and a singer. But if at times it drowns his clarity and simplicity, it gives a phantom touch of extraordinary subtlety, and to much of his poetry an extraordinary beauty, that lifts his lyric faculty into an insurmountable height. He drew like Burns, the peasant of Scotland, inspiration from nature, but with a mystical rapture alien to the Scots singer. Blake cares for the splendour of human love, or the rapture of the sun and the sky, only so far as it carries him to experience the state of some inner illumination. Industrial Revolution While the Industrial revolution disgusted him, he saw in the simple joys and cheeriness of ordinary life a Paradise regained. And In the Songs of Innocence, he entered an Eden from which man had long been alienated. No poet, not even Wordsworth, drew charm from simpler sources than Blake; and none revelled with such gay and exquisite feelings of discovery. If he had the naturalness and the spontaneity of a child, he had also his wild luxurious fancy; and a quaint, delicious fantasy binds by threads of shimmering gossamer all living things, uniting them in a spirit of joyous abandon and tender sympathy. But the rapture of Blake is not altogether unreflective; while he loves Eden, he is not deaf to the ugly clamour of the world outside. If he wrote the Songs of Innocence, he also wrote Songs of Experience. Side by side with the rapturous joy he felt the bitterness of hate and the miseries and complexities that afflict the soul of an adult man. Both the naturalism and mysticism of the Romantic Revival found expression in Blake. On this point, he differs from pioneers like Burns, who is simply naturalistic, or Cowper, who is only slightly touched by mysticism. On the naturalistic side, he deals with the simplest phases of life; with the love of flowers, hills and streams, the blue sky, the brooding clouds. But the mystical vision of the poet is always transforming these familiar things, unearthing their obscure aspects and spiritualising the commonplace into something strange and wonderful. Mysticism Mysticism in poetry is blended usually with a wistful melancholy. “The desire of the moth for the star and the night for the morrow” animates the poet's soul; and in his thirst for eternity, he feels more and more dissatisfied with the show of life. Blake as Mystic But Blake is an exception. He is joyful mystic; for him the morning stars sing together, and the splendour of life outweighs its shadows. There are mournful regrets in his verse, no sighing for a day that is dead. Evil rouses his anger, not his tears. Sorrow he accepts cheerfully as a necessary twin of joy. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine ; Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine. It is right it should be so; Man was made for joy and woe; And, when this we rightly know, Safely through the world we go. Comparison Unlike some mystics he did not seek after the spirit world because he despised the world of sense, but because he loved it so well he felt there was more in it than man could fathom here. His mysticism was not an inspiration for the future; it was a realization of the present. “ The kingdom of God is within you”: we have only to free ourselves from what is base and paltry, and we live in this realm of this spiritual beauty now. Reality for Blake The only unreality for Blake was the external world; the great reality the world of his visions. Whatever validity we may attach to these visions, we cannot write them off as the delusions of an unbalanced mind, for he never confused them with the phenomena of ordinary life. They were differentiated by his mind wholly distinct. – Compton-Rickett. Symbolism in The Lamb and The Tyger 18. Symbolism What is Symbol The word ‘symbol' is derived from the Greek verb ‘ symballein' which means ‘ to throw together'. Its noun form is ‘symbolon' which means ‘mark', ‘emblem' ‘token' or ‘sign'. It is an object animate or inanimate which represents or ‘stands for' something else. Coleridge defines According to Coleridge, a symbol ‘is characterized by a translucence of the special (i.e. the species) in the individual.' A symbol differs from an allegorical sign in that it has a real existence whereas an allegorical sign is arbitrary. Example Scales, for example, symbolize justice; the orb and the sceptre symbolize monarchy and rule; a dove symbolizes peace ; a goat symbolizes lust ; the lion symbolizes strength and courage; the bull dog symbolizes tenacity ; the rose symbolizes beauty ; the lily stands for purity; the Cross stands for Christianity. Actions and gestures have also symbolical value. The clenched fist symbolizes aggression; beating of the breast signifies remorse; hands-up signifies surrender. literary symbol A literary symbol combines an image with a concept. Even words themselves are a kind of symbol. It may be public or private, universal or local. In literature, a journey into the underworld and a return from it as in the works of Virgil, Dante and James Joyce are public symbols. Such a journey may be an interpretation of a spiritual experience, a dark night of the soul and a kind of redemptive odyssey. Examples of private symbols are those that recur in the works of W. B. Yeats : the sun and the moon, a tower, a mask, a tree, a winding stair and a hawk. In Macbeth there is a recurrence of the blood image symbolizing guilt and violence. In Hamlet, weeds and disease symbolize corruption and decay. The storm scene in King Lear may be taken as symbolic of the cosmic and domestic chaos to which ‘unaccommodated man' is exposed. The shooting of the Albatross in Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner is symbolic of all sin and stands for a lack of respect for life and for a proper humility towards the natural order. In Four Quartets T. S. Eliot makes frequent use of the symbols of Fire and Rose. We come across, mainly in poetry, instances of the use of concrete image to express an emotion or an abstract idea. Eliot calls it ‘objective correlative' meaning ‘ a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion'. ‘Transcendental' symbolism In this kind, concrete images are used as symbols to represent a general or universal ideal world of which the real world is a shadow. Sir Thomas Browne's magnificent phrase is remarkable in this context : ‘the sun itself is the dark simulacrum, and light is the shadow of God'. Baudelaire and his followers created the image of the poet as a kind of seer or voyant(clairvoyant)/voyante who could see through and beyond the real world (to) the world of ideal forms and essences. Eminent French symbolists are Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine and Rimbaud. English symbolists include W. B.Yeats , T.E.Hulme, Ezra Pound, T.S.Eliot. German literature has Rainer Maria Rilke, and Stefan George. Notable Russian symbolits are Bryusov, Volynsky and Bely. Blake's Symbolism Blake uses a plethora of symbols in The Lamb and The Tyger. The poetical contents of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience appeared in two volumes as The Songs of Innocence in 1789 followed by Songs of Experience issued five years later. Soon Blake merged the two volumes together in 1794, giving it the subtitle “Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” Let alone the symbolism in the poems, Blame's enterprise of combination of the two volumes into a single one has deeply symbolical value, as the human soul has two contrary divisions – innocence and experience. The child represents innocence, while experience is represented by the adult who acquires worldliness ‘through endless imitation.' As a child grows into a adult man, he distances himself from God which is the source of innocence. As long as a human being remains a child, he lives in close contact with God, and lives in joy. The darker aspects of life begin to occupy the human mind, as he grows into manhood, and the freedom a child enjoys vanishes, leaving his mind in afflictions. These afflictions are symbolised by the phrase 'dark forests of the night.' Wordsworth in his Immortality Ode dwells on this same object. While a six years' boy of a pigmy size bears reflections of the innocence, the grown-up man is lost in complexities of life. The Lamb which is the third poem of Songs of Innocence symbolizes the innocent nature of a child. As its eyes open up, it wonders at the world, but its wonder is created not by the tiger but by the lamb. As a child, it feels affinity with everything innocent, and it feels elated at the sight of the green woods, the dimpling stream, the air, the green hills, the green meadows, the gra**hopper, the painted birds all laughing. The child discovers cheerfulness not only in the natural objects, but also enjoys the delight of Mary, Susan and Emily with their sweet mouths singing ‘Ha, Ha, He ! ' (Poem No: 7) Thus the Blake points out the whole of the child world as embodiment of joy. More significant is the poem Infant Joy (Poem No: 3) where the child of two days pronounces : ‘ I happy am Joy is my name.' The child here is Christ or God Himself blessing the accursed adult : “Sweet Joy befall thee!” The first stanza of the poem expresses the delight of the child as it sees the innocent creature. It is an expression of juvenile wonder. His wonder is expressed in the shape of questions: Little Lamb, who made thee? The next line expresses wonder with the natural curiosity of a child to know about its creator. So from its lips comes the question: Dost thou know who made thee? The very word 'know' is potently significant. The child being innocent does not ‘know' about its creator as it lives still in the Paradise. The word 'know' is used in the simple sense. The child asks the lamb to learn if has any knowledge about its creator. A child by itself does not know who its parents are; he gains this knowledge from its parents who are adults. In this way, the simple word ‘know' has a deep symbolical value, bringing about a contrast with the experience (knowledge) of the adult who seems to know many things having eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree. The child's wonder revolves round many things: who gave it life, and who gave it the clothing of delight, the softest clothing, woolly bright, and who had given it the tender voice that overflows 'the vale profound.'. The stanza closes with the repetition of the lines that the poem begins with. This suggests that the wonder of the child continues to haunt him, that the innate inquisitiveness of the child who is a stranger to the world remains unfulfilled. The stanza basically symbolises the innocence of the child manifest in its wonder. The child wonders about its origin, its grazing on the meadow skirted by a stream, the delightful and soft clothing and its tender voice. An adult, even at height of his appreciation, would not surely find beauty in the clothing of the lamb and in its bleating. Thus the lamb becomes a part of the child's world that wonders at the beauty of mountainous valley – its meadow, its pasture, its rolling stream and the food that it offers the innocent creature. The child's world is joyous and equally joyous is the world of the lamb in which it lives delightfully, inspiring every object to rejoice. The second stanza reflects upon the child's knowledge of the lamb's father. As in the first stanza, the stanza too begins with two lines, the first line being repeated in the second. Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll tell thee: The child's knowledge is not like the knowledge of Adam, representative of an adult man. Adam had choice, and he knew very well that transgression (violation) of the divine command would result in his banishment from the Garden of Eden. His knowledge is intuitive marked by simplicity. He, as it lives in close touch with God, knows that the creator of the lamb is the Lamb, who is known by that name. As a child he does not have any knowledge or notion of the wrath or fierceness of God, but knows that He must be a man of his nature, ‘meek and mild' like His little offspring and /or like Itself. The child by its very intuition, not from his knowledge of the Bible, knows that He became a little child, born in Bethlehem in Jerusalem. This knowledge in him is inborn, not acquired, and the child delightfully pronounces that both it and the lamb are known by His name. Thus God, Christ, Lamb and the Child are bonded together by the string of innocence. The child suddenly a**umes the role of God, the father of the lamb, and offers blessings on the Lamb for its innocence and tenderness. This appears to be sudden to us, as we cannot imagine that a child has the power to bless. Practically, a child is characterized by much of the innocence of God, and so it blesses the innocent creature spontaneously. Here the child acquires another characteristic of God: omniscience and graciousness. Only those that are pure in heart enjoy the blessings of God, and become entitled to eternal bliss. Thus in the second stanza, Blake uses Lamb as the symbol of God, the omniscient and yet kind and innocent. The Tyger If The Lamb of Songs of Innocence be the acclamation of the innocence that a child embodies, The Tyger expresses the adult experience that afflicts his soul. Blake, despite being romantic visionary, was not unaware of the endless sufferings of human life. The Songs of Experience is a document of the terrifying experiences of the adult life whose origin owes to the relentless deviation from the childlike innocence. But the evil that occupies the human soul is a counterpoint to the innocence of the child, and yet forms a part of the character of the matured man who becomes a resident of the ‘ prison house' of his own making. Even these dark experiences have justification of their own in as much as they show man's fallibility. The Tiger symbolises wrath and fierceness, as the lamb symbolises innocence, and in order to redeem man the fierceness of spirit is necessary. The innocent that is lost to man cannot be earned back by a weak endeavour; vigorous spiritual struggle is necessary to gain back freedom. This spiritual struggle can be performed only by the tigrine vigour coupled with the wrath that should be directed to emerge out of the forests of the dark night. Ordinarily, the lamb's innocence will charm a person, but the fierceness of the tiger will appal him. The tiger of Blake symbolises this fierce spirit that must invigorate man in his fight against the mighty evil that sits tightly on his soul. Here, however, there is a choice. While the innocence of the child is omnipresent, the adult man has to choose whether he will continue to be a denizen of the dark forest or come back to the jolly world Mary, Susan and Emily with their “ha, Ha, He!” The Tyger begins with the same wonder as the The Lamb. While The Lamb begins with the inquisitiveness a child feels, The Tyger begins with a wonder expressed in exclamation. While meekness of the lamb, its tender voice, its delightful clothing produce wonder in the mind of the child, the adult mind is astonished at the ‘fearful symmetry' with its burning eyes produces the wonder of the fallen man. The man lost in the worldliness or rather world-weariness is not, however, devoid of the awareness of God, and that is why he, overcome with wonder, asks to know what immortal hand could frame him. The very word, ‘immortal' reflecting Blake's mysticism, points to the fact that even an adult man, if even distanced from the world of innocence, has the awareness of the immortal Being, i.e. God. In the other words, although the evil forces muffle an adult man's mind up, he still possesses traces of quality that he has inhered from its creator. The burning brightness of the tiger's eyes symbolising the wrath of God is the only potent weapon to pierce through the darkness of the forests, representing an entangled soul, to destroy that not-very-weak Satanic combatant that the evil is. In the second stanza, the adult man is still wonder-struck. But by the time he has grown into an adult man, his intellect has started working, and so he has some knowledge of the creative process. He tries to explore the source of the unearthly fire, because he believes that the light that is emanated by the tiger's eyes cannot have its origin on earth. Here, the use of the word, ‘aspire' has a symbolical undertone, expressing the adult man's aspiration to gain back his lost glory. The creative process would end with the exploration of the source that lies in the ‘distant or deep skies' but must be ‘seized.' This is to say that the spiritual struggle does meet with success with aspiration shooting up in the heart, but steadfast struggle must continued with the tigrine till emancipation is achieved. In the third stanza, adult awareness of the working in a blacksmith's shop, he wonders at the vigour of the Being that created this creature with fearful symmetry. The creator has not only iron-like brawns but has also an artistic sense. Without this artistic sense, the creature with a fearful symmetry could not be created. The adult man, unlike the child, seeks to know the moment of its birth, and when its dread hands and feet began to work. The whole stanza symbolizes the might and strength of the creator that created this creature of ‘fearful symmetry' with its eyes burning out the darkness of evil. In the fourth stanza, with the same adult awareness of the forging process, he seeks to know, wonder haunting him, about the furnace in which the immense creature of immeasurable strength and fierceness was forged. A blacksmith needs a hammer, a chain, a furnace , and anvil when a he forges a iron work. Now, as the tiger is huge in size, the tools must be proportionate to the need. The adult man cannot imagine the kind of tools that the forger used, because this is purely inconceivable to him. The most important issue is raised in the last line of the fourth stanza : how did the creator grasp the ‘deadly terror' of the tiger which is not a lifeless iron work. So underneath works an awareness, if not innocent, of the adult man's knowledge of the omnipotent power. The fourth stanza is powerfully symbolical. It alludes to the myth of tearful angels that rallied round Satan during his inappropriate bid to overthrow God from His seat. That a person, less omnipotent than God, cannot create a creature like the tiger is pointed out by this allusion, to which the adult man, with or without the knowledge of the Bible knows. Here stars symbolize the angels, who, following their knowledge of the misadventure in which they participated at the provocation of Lucipher, filled the skies with tears. And now comes most potent questioning respect of the two contrary states of the human soul: Did he who made the Lamb thee? Here adult experience is combine the childhood innocence. The child said by his divine that he knew that the same person created the beating animal and him, and referred to the fact that both of them were known by His name. In The Tyger, the adult man, not in possession of the divine innocence, expresses his inquisitiveness if the creator of the meek lamb was the creator of the dreaded creature. The answer lies in the question itself, because although adult experience is besmeared with worldly desires, the adult man is not an being separate from his as a child. The third line of the stanza has also reference to the artistic sense of the maker – be he the maker of the lamb or of the tiger. The lamb has a beauty of its own , and so has the tiger. And the adult man, himself impressed by the symmetry, seeks to know whether God felt satisfied at his work of art. The use of word ‘smile' has deep symbolical connotation as an artistist feels when he is able to make a successful work of art. God created the fierce animal because he wanted to create an animal of such nature with the objective of restoring man the lost happiness by presenting before him an embodiment of fierceness that is required to set ablaze the darkness engulfing the soul. Conclusion Thus we see that The Lamb of The Songs of Innocence and The Tyger of The Songs of Experience represent two contrary states of the human soul that is one. The divine glory of childhood innocence is clouded by worldly desires making life miserable, and if one has the regain lost happiness and avoid lasting sorrow he must fight out the evil forces with the divine wrath and fierceness resented by the tiger. Blake's tiger has been traditionally interpreted as the divine wrath, and in his poem Gerontion, Eliot writes : In the juvescence of the year Came the tiger,…. These two poems testify to what Blake said: “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to human existence.” If the contraries had not been world, the world might have lost much of its attraction; and reconciliation of the contraries leads a man towards greater perfection attained through arduous struggle. Blake seems to echo Hegel's dialectics of thesis, antithesis and synthesis as the process of natural evolution. Symbolism in The Lamb and The Tyger Blake uses a plethora of symbols in The Lamb and The Tyger. Originally The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience appeared in two volumes as The Songs of Innocence in 1789 and The Songs of Experience published in 1794. When Blake merged the two volumes together in 1794, he gave it the subtitle “Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” Blake's enterprise of combining the two volumes into a single one has deeply symbolical value. The anthology symbolizes the two contrary aspects of the human soul – innocence and experience. The child represents innocence, while experience is represented by the adult who acquires worldliness ‘through endless imitation'. The dark forests of the night symbolize the chaotic state of an adult. (123) The Lamb which is the third poem of Songs of Innocence symbolizes the innocent nature of a child. As its eyes open up, it wonders at the world, but its wonder is created not by the tiger but by the lamb. The first stanza of the poem expresses the delight of the child as it sees the innocent creature. The description is an expression of juvenile wonder. His wonder is expressed in the shape of questions: Little Lamb, who made thee? The next line expresses wonder with the natural curiosity of a child to know about its creator. So from its lips comes the question: Do thou know who made thee? The very word 'know' is potently significant. The child being innocent does ‘knows' about its creator and asks the lamb if it has any knowledge about its creator. In this way, the simple word ‘know' has a deep symbolical value. The knowledge of the child is not the philosophical knowledge of an adult. It is the innocent awareness of a meek and mild child who still lives in contact with God. (183) The child's world is symbolised by images. It is a sunlit world devoid of darkness. The stream and the meadow where the lamb grazes symbolise the natural world of the child. The wool of the lamb is its 'soft clothing' and its bleating that fills the air of 'all the vales' is tender; and the joyous bleating of the lamb makes the vales rejoice. This is how the poet paints the innocent world of the nature and the child, which is full of joy. The child is a happy creature as the lamb is. Their happiness results from their contact with God and they have not entered the world of experience. More significant is the poem Infant Joy (Poem No: 3) where the child of two days pronounces : ‘ I happy am, Joy is my name.' The child here is Christ or God Himself blessing the accursed adult : “Sweet Joy befall thee!” (154) If The Lamb be the acclamation of the innocence that a child embodies, The Tyger expresses the adult experience that afflicts human soul. Blake, despite being a romantic visionary, was not unaware of the endless sufferings of human life. Songs of Experience is a document of the terrifying experiences of the adult life whose origin owes to the relentless deviation from the childlike innocence. The evil that occupies the human soul is a counterpoint to the innocence of the child. The tiger symbolises God's wrath and fierceness, as the lamb symbolises His innocence, and in order to redeem man, fierceness of spirit is necessary. The innocence that is lost to man cannot be earned back by a weak endeavour; vigorous spiritual struggle is necessary to gain back freedom. This spiritual struggle can be performed only by the tigrine vigour coupled with the wrath that should be exploited to dispel the forests of the dark night. The tiger of Blake symbolises the fierce spirit that must invigorate man in his fight against the mighty evil that sits tightly on his soul. The images of The Tyger are not like those of The Lamb. Adult mind which is cheerless and messy is devoid of the joy of the child. While the child wonders at the simple features of the joyful lamb, grazing by the stream on the meadow in the vales, the tiger roams in the dark forests of the night which symbolise the cheerless and complex mind of an adult. Then comes the image of a blacksmith's foundry where in a furnace, the tiger with its fearful symmetry has been forged. The tiger symbolises 'dread.' It is forged with sinewy hand on an anvil by thumping hammer. The adult especially lays emphasis on tiger's terror while, as we have seen, the child is delighted at the sight of the lamb. Blake also makes use of an allusion to the rebellion that Satan and his comrades waged against God who vanquished the rebel angels with a single strike of thunder. The adult is so terrified that he, even knowing the intensity of God's wrath, seeks to know if the creator of the terrific animal felt dread himself after infusing life into its heart. Doubts cloud the mind of an adult and he asks if God smiled to see his work or if he himself felt dread. No such doubt stuffs the mind of the child. So, while the child tells the lamb that it knows who had the lamb and gives the answer straightway, the adult leaves with questions only. His statement - Did he who made the Lamb make thee? - is the expression of the doubt that sits in his soul. While the child plainly says that God created booth him and the creature, the adult's is a philosophical speculation. He reasons that the dreadful, terrific, fearful creature cannot but be made by an immortal hand. His is not a simple awareness, but a philosophical enquiry. But all hope is not lost. The adult is not lost from God's grace altogether as the wrath of God represented by the brightly burning tiger is there to save man from worldly bondage. The only way for redemption of man is vigorous struggle against the evil that occupies his soul, but the struggle is fierce struggle. To be successful in this venture an adult must be equipped with the strength and fierceness of the tiger. The child, with its divine innocence, knows who created the lamb: Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll tell thee; and he tells the lamb that his creator is He who calls himself a Lamb. The child also tells the lamb that his progenitor is meek and mild and that both he and the lamb are called by His name. The child does not leave the name of the its father a mystery; he pronounces that God is the creator of them both and invokes His blessings upon the little innocent creature. But the adult man in The Tyger leaves with questions, having failed to possess the innate knowledge of the child. (705) The 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 watered it in fears, Night and 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 veiled the pole; In the morning glad I see My foe outstretched beneath the tree. a. Intrinsic Elements - Speaker and Tone The tone of this poem isn't an ambiguous mood. It is clearly recognized that the tone or mood which is shown in this poem is about the anger. - Diction Wrath : Blake uses wrath to express an extremely anger . So it is used to strengthen the word angry in the first line. Apple : Apple appears in many religious traditions, often as a mystical or forbidden fruit. Blake is a poet who was always interested in mystical thing. It can be the strong reason why he used apple in his poem. Besides apple was also popular in Christian tradition holds that Adam and Eve ate an apple from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden. - Rhyme “The Poison Tree” is presented with very organized lines as the first poem ; A Dream. As we can see, the two first lines have the same sound in the end of each so the two last lines do. So the rhyme of the poem is AABB. – Structure This poem consists of four stanzas. Each stanza consists of four lines. So it can be concluded that “The Poison Tree” is closed-structure poem. - Syntax The poem is completely arranged with past tense sentences. It can be an*lyzed by examining the verbs. In the first stanza there are was, told, did as verbs, those verbs are the past forms of am, tell and does. The past tense is also used in the second stanza. Watered and sunned are the past forms of sun and water. Grew, bore, beheld, and knew are the past forms of grow, bear, behold, and know. So the four lines of the third stanza are the past tense forms. Blake combines some tenses in the last stanza. And into my garden stole when the night had veiled the pole can be recognized as a complex sentence. Whereas the third line in the morning glad I see is the present tense and outstretched is the past form of verb in the last line. – Symbol Apple : Christian tradition in the past believed that apple is a mystical or forbidden fruit. In this poem Blake suggests that the tree which grows in anger bears an apple. Furthermore apple also symbolized “the sin”. Tree : symbolize as a - Figurative Language – Theme The poem explores themes of indignation, revenge, and more generally the fallen state of mankind. The poem suggests that acting on anger reduces the need for vengeance, which may be connected to the British view of anger held following the start of the French Revolution. The revolutionary forces were commonly connected to the expression of anger with opposing sides arguing that the anger was either a motivating rationale or simply blinded an individual to reason. Blake, like Coleridge, believed that anger needed to be expressed, but both were wary of the type of emotion that, rather than guide, was able to seize control. – b. Imagery Extrinsic Elements - Author's biography The poem “The Poison Tree” suggests that acting on anger reduces the need for vengeance, which may be connected to the British view of anger held following the start of the French Revolution that was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France from 1789 to 1799 that profoundly affected French and modern history, marking the decline of powerful monarchies and churches and the rise of democracy and nationalism. The revolutionary forces were commonly connected to the expression of anger with opposing sides arguing that the anger was either a motivating rationale or simply blinded an individual to reason. Blake, like Coleridge, believed that anger needed to be expressed, but both were wary of the type of emotion that, rather than guide, was able to seize control. Although Blake was not part of any radical political organizations in England at the time of the French Revolution, his works suggest a connection to revolutionary thought and the poem serves as his involvement in the debate over the merits of the French Revolution. Blake felt that there was a strong connection between the American and French Revolutions and that these revolutions had a universal and historical impact. He later wrote a poem “The French Revolution” which was intended as a poetic history of these current events in Blake's life and was supposed to be an account of Blake's understanding of the French Revolution described in seven books of poetry first published in 1791. Although Blake was not part of any radical political organizations in England at the time of the French Revolution, his works suggest a connection to revolutionary thought and the poem serves as his involvement in the debate over the merits of the French Revolution. – Setting "A Poison Tree" is a poem written by William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his Songs of Experience collection. It describes the narrator's repressed feelings of anger towards an individual emotion which eventually lead to murder. c. Summary "The Poison Tree" consists of four sets of rhyming couplets. The obvious moral of this poem is that hidden wrath becomes more dangerous behind the deceit that hides it from its object. Possibly, the “Friend” mentioned in the first stanza is a friend simply because the speaker respects him enough to voice his anger face to face, whereas the “enemy” may be a potential friend who remains an enemy because the speaker keeps his wrath secret and nurtures it. There is a touch of irony, however, in that the poem ends with the speaker's gladness over his foe's d**h by poison. No final line refutes the secret nurturing of wrath, and in fact, the poem may be read as a guide for taking vengeance upon one's enemies. Some critics suggest that the apple symbolizes Blake's creative work which has a special purpose to criticize the condition in that time : French Revolution that resulted industrial revolution. And it was maybe because of this that Blake went to live in the countryside, far from all the industrial changes and crowded cities. He was aware of the power of this industrial revolution, but he did not let it change his way of life. He kept doing his jobs (etching, printing, coloring) as he had always done, without being “infected” with this kind of dehumanization that was spreading all over the country. Rana Nadeem ul Ha**an, M.A. (English), UOS (Punjab) Superior College Pattoki, Voice Link: 0092 307 49 52 807