The theme of William Blake's "The Poison Tree" looks deceptively simple (anger), but it's not.  Rather, the theme lies in how suppressing one's anger can actually make it grow more than it was before.  Blake presents a Old Testament-esque Christian allegory, similar to the Garden of Eden story, to indirectly reveal his themes of forbearance, self-restraint, and moderation.

The original title of the poem in his anthology Songs of Experience was "Christian Forbearance."  Speaking from experience himself, Blake says that secretly hiding angry feelings from others will only let them fester until they destroy both parties.   So says Enotes:

The principal theme of "A Poison Tree" is not anger itself but how the suppression of anger leads to the cultivation of anger. Burying anger rather than exposing it and acknowledging it, according to "A Poison Tree," turns anger into a seed that will germinate. Through the cultivation of that seed, which is nourished by the energy of the angry person, wrath grows into a mighty and destructive force.

William Blake's allegorical poem, "A Poison Tree," is concerned with the subject of anger. The speaker of the poem reveals to his friend that he is angry, and the anger dissipates. But when the speaker hides his anger from his enemy, the anger grows, much like a tree. The fact that the tree is "poison" tells us that, by ignoring or suppressing anger, we are also poisoned. The apple that appears on the tree of anger symbolizes that poisonous effect. The final line is ominous; the speaker's delight at the "foe outstretched beneath the tree" offers a warning about what happens when we suppress our anger. If we ignore or deny our feelings, we will become wicked, bitter, and even vengeful.

What is the moral of the poem "A Poison Tree"?  

The moral lesson is a lesson on the dangers of holding in angry feelings about a person.  

When the poem begins, the narrator of the poem tells his readers that he was angry with a friend. We do not know the cause of the anger, but we know that the narrator spoke to his friend about his feelings. He got his feelings out in the open, he was no longer angry, and the relationship was kept whole.

Contrast that with the second time that the narrator is angry with someone. This time the narrator does not get his feelings out in the open. Instead he feeds those angry feelings, and his bitterness grows. The narrator cultivates his angry feelings in the same way that a person would care for a growing plant. His anger grows so much that it eventually poisons the entire relationship, and the relationship is forever destroyed.

The moral of the poem is to be open and honest with your feelings because nursing your anger will only bring more harm.

What is the moral of the poem "A Poison Tree"?  

In this Blake poem, an individual who hides and nurses his anger is contrasted with a person who goes immediately and tells his "friend" why he is angry. The person who confesses his anger is able to get over it and move on. The person who buries it from his "enemy" pretends everything is all right. Meanwhile, beneath the surface, the anger festers. The man waters his anger with his tears and suns it with false smiles. By doing this he cultivates his anger so that it grows bigger and bigger. Finally, the anger grows into a tree that bears poisonous fruit. The moral of the poem is that we should not nurse our anger towards another person but confront the person who hurt us and work out our issues directly. Otherwise, we become something poisonous that destroys other people. 

What is the message of the poem "A Poison Tree"?

One difficulty with untangling the "message" of any of Blake's work is that Blake himself had his own, extremely complicated personal religion and most of the elements of his poetry refer to parts of this religion. Since these beliefs are ones derived from voices he (but no one else) heard, and the accounts of the pantheons in this religion vary from poem to poem, untangling the actual meaning or point of his poems can be difficult; there is a substantial amount of literary criticism devoted to this task.

First, whenever we encounter a single apple or fruit in a garden, we are seeing a reference to the Garden of Eden and the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In the Bible, eating this was part of Original Sin which got Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden and caused all sort of ensuing problems for the human race. In Blake, Eden was not a singular event, but a wellspring of creativity and a mental state to which he could return. 

The anger he expresses to his friend enables him to be at peace with himself. The anger he keeps towards his foe is not expressed, and leads him towards hypocrisy and inauthenticity, which are part of human fallenness. The fruit of this anger, though, kills his enemy, and thus rage and rebellion also serve a positive purpose; as Blake admired Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, inter alia, one should normally assume that his treatment of Christian material inverts many of the values that Christians would impute to various Biblical narratives.

Since God created the tree of which Adam and Eve ate to get expelled from Eden, the parallel we should draw is that God is a foe of humans and created the tree out of concealed anger. 

What is the message of the poem "A Poison Tree"?

The message of the poem is that if we hold anger within and nurture it, it is poisonous and can harm others.  In the first verse, the narrator sets the stage for this message by stating that when he is angry with someone and tells the person, his anger ceases.  But when he keeps his anger to himself, anger with "a foe" (line 3), his anger grows.  While the narrator makes a distinction in the poem between friend and foe, I think that this distinction is not all that important in terms of human emotion, since anger held in can just as easily be toxic to friend and foe. 

As the poem goes on, the narrator uses the metaphor of a tree to show what happens to the seed that begins as anger. He tends to the tree with fears, tears, false smiles, and "deceitful wiles" (line 8). This is the narrator feeding his anger by holding onto it, rather than simply letting it go. Ultimately, his anger bears fruit, the apple on the tree. When his foe sneaks into the narrator's garden and eats the apple, he dies from its poison. Thus, the narrator's anger has killed his foe.

What is the lesson of "A Poison Tree" by William Blake? 

One lesson of "A Poison Tree" is that if you hold onto your anger and nourish it, it will grow and hurt someone--in the case of this poem, it hurts an enemy, but in other cases, it can hurt the person who is angry, too. The poem is an extended metaphor in which anger is described as a tree. 

In the poem, the narrator does not tell his foe that he is angry, so he says, "...my wrath did grow" (Blake line 4).  As a tree needs sunshine and water to grow and thrive, the narrator nourishes his anger, saying, "And I sunned it with smiles/And with soft deceitful wiles" (lines 7-8) and he watered it with tears.  In other words, he is dishonest with the person whom he is angry with, pretending to be friendly, while his anger grows and grows. 

As the tree gets larger, it bears fruit, "an apple bright" (line 10), that his enemy steals into his garden and takes.  Eating this apple, which is the fruit of the narrator's anger, kills the enemy, and the narrator sees "My foe outstretched beneath the tree" (line 16). 

When we are angry and we say what is on our minds and let it go, it loses its power over us and others.  When we hold onto our anger and obsess over it, it is toxic, hurting others, physically or mentally, and even hurting ourselves in body and spirit.  The more we feed our anger, the larger and more harmful it becomes. 

What is the figurative meaning in the poem "A 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. 

Here, Blake speaks of how we deal with our anger. We don't want to remain angry with friends and are more willing to talk to them, so we stop our anger there instead of leaving it to fester, or "grow" as he says, a word used ambiguously here, referring to how our anger intensifies; this word allows Blake to turn "wrath" into a tree, though, as it is "growing."

And I waterd it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears: 

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles. 

In the image of the Tree of Wrath (as opposed to the Tree of Life or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), Blake shows how we make our anger worse, turning it to hatred. We add our fears to it and we add deceit (since we aren't willing to admit we're angry). Here, we have the Tree of Wrath being nourished with negative behaviors. 

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. 

As we add other emotions to our anger, it only grows. In this case, the tree eventually produces a shiny bauble (an apple, reminiscent of Eve's temptation in the Garden of Eden) which entices his enemy, who does not know that the day he eats of it, he shall surely die. 

And into my garden stole, 

When the night had veil'd the pole; 

In the morning glad I see; 

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

What is the theme of the poem "A Poison Tree"?

The main theme of the poem is the danger of bottling up negative emotions instead of dealing with them.

The speaker relates how he was angry with a friend, but after telling him about his anger, it went away. This would suggest that it's best not to brood on things and that, instead, we should always get things off our chest. Not only will this make it easier for us to move on, but it will also improve relations with our friends.

In relation to his enemy, the speaker adopted a different approach. Instead of coming right out and talking about his anger with him, the speaker bottled up all his negative thoughts, feeding them with his fears and tears while trying to cover them up with smiles and deceit.

As the speaker candidly confesses, this simply had the effect of making his anger grow. Blake uses the metaphor of a tree, a poison tree, no less, to emphasize how strong and sturdy the speaker's hatred and anger toward his enemy eventually became.

It says a lot about the speaker that he was very pleased when his enemy dropped dead after eating the poisoned apple from the tree. As his foe lay "outstretched beneath the tree," he felt very glad indeed.

But there's still a sense that the speaker hasn't really dealt with his negative emotions and that the hatred he felt toward his late enemy will not die with him. This is because, when it comes to his enemies, there's every reason to believe that the speaker will continue to bottle up his negative emotions toward them instead of taking the step of talking things through with them, as he would do with a friend.

How does the theme of "A Poison Tree" convey the poem's message?

The theme of "A Poison Tree" examines the detrimental effects of harboring anger. In this poem, the speaker is angry twice: once at a friend and once at a foe. When he's angry with his friend, they talk it out; his anger thus dissipates. In contrast, when he's angry with his enemy, he holds it inside. The anger grows into "wrath." This connotes a more powerful form of anger. A common term is a "wrath of vengeance." When anger reaches this level, people seek revenge. The speaker nurtures this anger, allowing it to grow until it becomes a symbolic apple.

The speaker's foe tries to steal from him and ends up eating his anger-filled apple. When it kills him, the speaker is "glad" to see him stretched out beneath the tree.

The overall meaning here is that the speaker has now become something he never intended to be. His heart is so hardened by the anger he has allowed to grow that he doesn't care about the devastation he has caused; in fact, the pain of his foe brings him happiness.

So who wins here? Not the foe, and not the speaker. Living in anger causes unforeseen consequences to one's character.

How does the theme of "A Poison Tree" convey the poem's message?

The theme of "A Poison Tree" is its message. The theme/message Blake is communicating in this poem is that it causes damage to hang onto a hurt. If somebody hurts or upsets you, the best path to getting over it is to talk to them about it as quickly as you can. That way, you can get the problem resolved and move on with your life instead of ending up up doing something hateful. Resolving an issue occurs in the first two lines of the poem, when the speaker works out a problem with a friend. The speaker states:

I was angry with my friend;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

The rest of the poem, however, describes how the speaker holds onto to his anger against an enemy. Because he does this, the anger grows and grows. The speaker pretends to like his enemy, smiling as if everything is fine, but inside he is creating emotional poison—a toxic environment of hate—that Blake visualizes as a poisoned apple.

The speaker eventually kills his enemy with his hate and is glad of it. Blake thus shows how holding on to hurts can turn us into people who enjoy destroying others.

What is "A Poison Tree" about? What is the poet trying to convey?

“The Poison Tree” is a poem about the evil effects of holding anger in. The premise is introduced in the first stanza, in which the poet explains

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.

The rest of the poem uses language that suggests the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man from the Bible to show how nurturing bad feelings can be harmful. The “wrath” that is not told grows and grows until it bears “fruit,” an “apple bright” which tempts his foe and kills him when he eats it (“In the morning glad I see; / My foe outstretched beneath the tree”).

I think Blake is getting at two things here. First, the untold anger leads to the “death” of the foe—in other words, the end of their relationship. Second, and more importantly, is the poet’s “gladness” at seeing his enemy defeated; in harboring the hatred, the poet has turned himself into the serpent in the Garden of Eden story, an agent of destruction, and one who takes delight in harming others. Ultimately the person most harmed by “the poison tree” is the one who created it in the first place.

What is the poem "A Poison Tree" mainly about?

"A Poison Tree" by William Blake explores how individuals choose to handle their anger differently in regard to their friends and enemies. In the first quatrain, the speaker describes how he explained his anger to his friend, which resolved his negative feelings. In contrast, the speaker does not choose to resolve his angry feelings with his enemy. Instead of voicing his displeasure and resolving his anger, the speaker chooses to let it manifest and build. Blake uses an extended metaphor where an apple symbolizes the speaker's anger to describe how the speaker continues to hold onto his anger and let it grow. The speaker is deceitful towards his enemy and acts like he is in a positive mood while his anger continues to build. Eventually, the speaker's anger ends up killing his enemy. Blake's poem explores how people are willing to resolve their issues with friends yet choose to harbor angry feelings toward their enemies. These angry feelings manifest and have negative effects. 

What is the poem "A Poison Tree" mainly about?

"A Poison Tree" examines the effects of unresolved anger. In the poem, the narrator or persona first gets angry at a friend. He talks to his friend and that dialogue resolves his problem so that he can forgive his friend. Then he grows angry at an enemy. Rather than communicate with his enemy and hash the problem out, he holds the anger inside. As the poem puts it, he "waters" the anger with his tears, and then "suns" it with the false smiles he offers his enemy. Eventually, this anger grows and grows until it becomes a tree that bears a shiny, poisonous apple. The enemy eats the apple and dies. The poem might remind the reader of the apple that the serpent offered Eve in the Garden of Eden. The poem conveys the message that unresolved anger that is nursed as a grudge becomes a poison that can hurt other people. 

What is the poem "A Poison Tree" mainly about?

Blake's "The Poison Tree" from his Songs of Experience is about how nursing anger and hate corrodes our souls. The poem begins by stating that: 

I was angry with my friend/I told my wrath/My wrath did end.

In other words, its best to make a "clean breast" of our feelings.

However, most of the poem shows the narrator nursing a bitter grudge against an enemy. It describes how this hate, unconfessed, grows like a plant and takes over the narrator's soul. He waters his grudge with his "tears" and suns his hate with his "smiles" of deception towards his enemy, pretending to like him.

The hate bears fruit, an apple. At this point, we should think of the Garden of Eden and the apple that the hate-filled Satan offered Adam and Eve.

The narrator has become Satan, his soul to turned to evil. He tempts his enemy with the "apple bright" and like Eve, the enemy falls for it. As the initial apple brought death to Adam and Eve (eventually), so the eating of this apple kills the narrator's foe. 

What does the poem "A Poison Tree" talk about? 

This is a very interesting poem that has a thought-provoking moral at the end of it.  Basically, the speaker of the poem describes two scenarios:  the first is where he was upset with someone, told that person about it, and then the incident was over and done with:  "I was angry with my friend:/I told my wrath, my wrath did end."  So, the point here is that when you are upset with someone, it is good to talk about it, to end the matter and move on.  The second scenario he describes is when he was angry with someone and kept his wrath within him instead of speaking about it; as a result, it "did grow". He thought about his anger more and more, and he nurtured it.  He "waterd it in fears," dwelling on his anger and fears, and tried to hid it as he "sunned it with smiles."  The wrath becomes so large and noticable that Blake uses a metaphor of an apple growing from a tree to describe how it feels to him; it is an apple poisoned with his wrath.  This is symbolic of how our anger can only yield bitter and poisonous results (or fruit) that are no good to anyone.  Along these lines,  at the end he states that

"In the morning glad I see;/My foe outstretched beneath the tree,"

which seems to indicate that the foe has partaken of this poisoned apple, and has died.  If your wrath and anger for someone is nurtured within you for so long, it eventually turns to poison, and that poison often does great damage to the person you are angry with.  It's kind-of like bottling up rage and having it explode, with disasterous and regretful results, instead of just dealing with your anger right away.  Blake uses a poisoned apple as a metaphor for that toxic anger that the reader grew by dwelling on it, and his foe, outstretched on the ground, is a symbol for the speaker having released his anger finally, and how it completely destroyed the other person.  I doubt Blake is referring to actual murder, but think of the consequences of blowing up at someone; it ruins friendships, self-esteem, families, marriages, and often has lasting impacts.  Blake's moral is that when we are angry, we should, as he did in line 2, talk about it and get it out there, so that it can "end" in a better way.

I hope that explanation helps a bit; good luck!