A Poison Tree The narrator speaks of "I" who is of the Old Testament God, renamed by Blake as Urizen, and the poison tree is his Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Instead of merely exploring wrath as the consequence as repressed anger, this poem incarnates wrath as an object. Wrath becomes a poison tree. Or rather, since the tree represents the body this anger becomes a sick and infectious body, which as …
showed first 75 words of 450 total

showed last 75 words of 450 total
…Fierce in dread silence on the blasted heath / Fell Upas sits, the Hydra-Tree of Death". The Upas tree provided the poison for the blowgun, a "tubular weapon from which projectiles are forcefully propelled by the human breath. ... The darts often are notched so that the poisoned tip will break off in the victim. The most common Old World poison is made from the sap of the Upas Tree (Antiaris toxicaria) and kills by cardiac effects"