Lyric Poem · Life
A Poison Tree
by William Blake · 1794
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.
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“A Poison Tree” by William Blake — quilloak.com/poems/a-poison-tree
Quick facts
- Poem
- A Poison Tree
- Poet
- William Blake
- Published
- 1794
- Length
- 16 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Rhyming Poems
- Themes
- Life, Sad
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 16 lines · 4 quatrains
- Line length
- Mostly 7-syllable lines.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- William Blake1757–1827
- Source record
- PoetryDBA Poison Tree by william-blake, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1794
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 4c5e0a4e71af0fec…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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