text: "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, emotions which eventually lead to murder. The poem explores themes of indignation, revenge, and more generally the fallen state of mankind.
  Background
  The Songs of Experience was published in 1795 as a follow-up to Blake's 1789 Songs of Innocence. The two books were published together under the merged title Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: the author and printer, W. Blake featuring 54 plates. The illustrations are arranged differently in some copies, while a number of poems were moved from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake continued to print the work throughout his life. Of the copies of the original collection, only 28 published during his life are known to exist, with an additional 16 published posthumously. Only 5 of the poems from Songs of Experience appeared individually before 1839 with "A Poison Tree" first published in the 1830 London University Magazine.