GCSE revision notes for Edexcel's ‘Conflict’ cluster

Poem

Structure

Language and imagery

Contextual information/about the author

Compare with …

The Poison Tree

William Blake

1794

• Four quatrains of two rhyming couplets each.
• Each line end-stopped (emphasises the rhyme).
• Alternating Trochaic (stressed followed by unstressed syllables).
• Trimeter (3 beats) – with Iambic (unstressed followed by stressed) tetrameter (4 beats) create a tension within the poem reflecting the subject of the poem.

• Sibilance (sunned it with smiles/and with soft deceitful wiles) emphasising the negative nature of the tree changes to alliteration of ‘b’ sounds (both, bore, bright) to emphasise his rage.
• Time references to ‘day and night’ and ‘night and morning' to emphasise the consuming nature of the anger.
• ‘an apple bright’ – symbolises his hatred and anger.
• ‘and’ stresses the childlike quality and increases the pace.
• Tree is an extended metaphor for the suppression of anger.

• 18^th century printmaker and combined poetry and images.
• Romantic Poetry – arguing against the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution and a return to a gentler way of life.
• Taken from ‘Songs of Experience’ and seemingly aimed at children to allow them to understand the negative world they would have to cope with.

• Destruction of Sennacherib

• A Poison Tree

• The Man He Killed