Stylistic Analysis of the Poem

“A Poison Tree” by William Blake

A paper submitted to the Master of Arts in English Language Teaching Department in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the subject TESL624 with a descriptive title Integrating Language
and Literature

By

JEFFREY V. REGALARIO
Master of Arts in English Language Teaching (MAELT)
Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Sta. Mesa, Manila

DR. ANNABELLE A. GORDONAS

Professor in TESL624 (Integrating Language and Literature)
Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Sta. Mesa, Manila

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to analyze the poem entitled, A Poison Tree, by William Blake from the perspective of
Stylistic analysis. This is made through the aspects of phonological, graphological, morphological, and
lexico-syntactic levels. The prime focus of this is to unveil the basic concepts, literal, and hidden meaning
evident in the poem.

I. INTRODUCTION

Writing any form of literary piece requires a systematic process to make readers explore the paradise
of the text and at the same better understand the meaning embroidered in it. One of the basic features of a
literary piece that makes it interesting for readers is the style. Style in literature is the literary element that
describes the ways that the author uses words — the author's word choice, sentence structure, figurative
language, and sentence arrangement all work together to establish mood, images, and meaning in the text
(Read Write Think, 2003). According to Study Smarter, style refers to the way in which an author uses
language to convey their ideas and create a unique voice and tone. It encompasses elements such as word
choice, sentence structure, tone, and figurative language, among others. Hence, the author’s style of the text
gives a wider space for the reader to decipher the context's implied meaning and whereabouts; however, they
may have different approaches depending on the target genre, and audience, it can be simple, formal,
informal, or complex. This reflects what kind of author they are.
Moreover, in-depth delving into the text will be your main bridge to getting what you need, but let's
roll back first to the study of styles--- the stylistics. Various researchers and writers across the globe gave
their profound yet substantial definitions of stylistics and how it is important in literature. Stylistics is a
branch of applied linguistics concerned with the study of style in texts, especially, but not exclusively, in
literary works.
(Giovanelli, M. &Mason, J., 2018) Stylistics is a discipline within the field of linguistics. This means that it
is a particular application of knowledge about language, just like sociolinguistics (the study of language in
social use) or psycholinguistics (the study of the psychology of language). Stylistics, as the name suggests,
is interested in style in spoken and written language. It is underpinned by the idea that whenever we use
language to talk or write, we are always – consciously and unconsciously – making choices about the words
we use (lexical choices) and the order in which we use them (syntactic structure). These choices form a
particular style and changing the choices changes the style. This is what stylistics explores: how authors
create effects through their linguistic styles and how readers interpret those effects. Stylistics is thus ‘simply
defined as the (linguistic) study of style, which is the way in which language is used’ (Leech & Short, 2007).
Consequently, stylistics serves as a tool for the students to further analyze the text especially how the author
conceptualizes their ways to fabricate the whole text.
Furthermore, stylistic analysis in literary studies is usually made for purpose of commenting on
quality and meaning in a text, stylistics, in other words, is the study of style used in literary and verbal
language and the effect writer or speaker wishes to communicate to the reader or hearer. Meanwhile,
Baroudi (2019) Stylistics analysis involves the analysis of various styles used in language to derive the
desired meaning or theme of given texts. It involves identifying the various ways in which authors of literary
works or poets convey their message, i.e., through an indirect and hidden pattern. Sharma (2018) said that
stylistics analysis has two major goals: first is to help the readers in making meaningful interpretation of the
text and second one is, in general, expand the knowledge and awareness of language. These aims are helpful
for students to read and study literature with excellent language practice. She also added that in literary
studies, stylistics analysis is usually made for the purpose of analyzing quality and meaning of a text.
Stylistics analysis is a part of literary in which understanding the possible meaning in a text and reveal the
good qualities of writing.

II. LEVELS OF STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

The stylistic analysis could be conducted by means of the levels of analysis. The levels of stylistic analysis
are identified as follows:
1. Phonological Level. This deals with the study of sound patterns of a given language, rules of
pronunciation, the rhyming scheme, and utterance of the words in the sentence. Phonological devices
are rhyme elements, alliteration, consonance, and assonance.
2. Graphological Level. This deals with the formalized rules of writing. Leech (1969) claims that
graphology exceeds orthography which refers to the whole writing system; punctuation,
paragraphing, and spacing. In short, it deals with the sentence's systematic formation, structure, and
punctuation.
3. Morphological Level. This deals with the construction of the words by adding prefixes and suffixes
to the root words. The main aim of this level is to study and analyze the words, the internal structure
of the sentence, and their formation. To find out foregrounding and the deviation, clauses, phrases,
words, nouns and verbs are to be distinguished.
4. Lexico-Syntax Level. It is the combination of two different words” Lexis” and “syntax”. Lexis is the
vocabulary used in a language or any writing for any purpose. On the other, syntax means ‘sentence
construction’: how words group together to make phrases and sentences. According to
Tallerman(1998).
5. Lexicosyntactic choices are obtained through devices such as piling of usual collocates, unusual
collocates, archaic, words, particular parts of speech, and figures of speech.

Therefore, in-close studying the phonological, graphological, morphological, lexico-syntax level, and
lexicosyntactic level of the poem entitled, The Poison Tree, is a must to unravel the styles used by the
author during the development and how it all affects the totality of the text.

III. ANALYSIS OF THE POEM

1. Phonological Level

 Couplet
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
 This poem uses a literary device called a couplet. A pair of end-rhymed lines of verse that are
self-contained in grammatical structure and meaning, Britannica Dictionary). The author has
made 8 evident couplets in the poem.

 Rhyme
And I watered it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:

The two boldened words above rhyme with each other. Rhyme is the repetition of syllables which is
typically seen at the end of a verse or stanza.

 Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme of the poem is aabb, ccdd, eeff, and gghh wherein the first couplet has (friend,
end), second couplet (foe, grow), third couplet (fears, tears), fourth couplet (smiles, wiles), fifth
couplet (night, bright) sixth couplet (shine, mine), seventh couplet (stole, pole), and eighth couplet
(see, tree).

 Alliteration

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

The underlined words all start with s, and these make them fall under alliteration. The writer used
this to make a good and meaningful effect on the flow of the ideas.

 Consonance

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

Consonant sounds were also evident in the above lines.

 Repetition

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 words “was angry” and “my wrath” were repeated twice. The writer employed this for him to
emphasize his points.

 Rhythm

I/ was/ ang/ry with /my/ friend;

The above line shows a clear pattern of iambic feet as each line in every stanza has four metrical
feet. Therefore, this rhythm falls under the iambic tetra meter.

2. Graphological Level

 Full Stop/Period (.)

 I told my wrath, my wrath did end. (Line 2)
I told it not, my wrath did grow. (Line 4)
And with soft deceitful wiles. (Line 8)
And it grew both day and night. (Line 9 )
Till it bore an apple bright. (Line 10)
And he knew that it was mine. (Line 12)
My foe outstretched beneath the tree. (Line 16)

The full stop/period can be seen in the following lines. A full stop/Period is a punctuation mark that
signifies the end of a statement. In this context, it aims to end a complete idea, but not necessarily the
whole verse or stanza.

 Comma

And I watered it in fears, (Line 5)

And I sunned it with smiles, (Line 7)
And my foe beheld it shine, (Line 11)
And into my garden stole, (Line 13)

The comma in this poem functions as a tool to separate ideas from one another. Commas normally
cuts words or groups of words and/or phrases. Therein, the writer uses commas for more pauses
rather than full stops, as a result, it adds spice for the readers to feel the poem.
 Semicolon

I was angry with my friend; (Line 1)

In the morning glad I see; (Line 15)

The semicolon is used as a connector for the writer to bridge his ideas into one structure only;
however, in this poem, there are only two sentences. It can be inferred here that the writer used only
two semicolons in order not to affect the smoothness of the flow.
 Colon

I was angry with my foe: (Line 3)

Night & morning with my tears: (Line 6)

There are only two made colons in this poem. Colon is used to introduce certain statements from a
particular concept or idea. Therefore, in this poem, the ideas in the two colons are from two different
matters.

3. Morphological Level

 Affixation
I was angry with my friend;
And I watered it in fears,
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.
When the night had veiled the pole;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
 The poet used a bunch of derivational affixes and suffixes to give weight and strength to the poem. It
is evident also that it gives emphasis and a logical way to deliver the message. In conclusion, the
writer used only simple yet comprehensible words to make the meaning-make feasible.

4. Lexical-Syntax Level
 Hyperbole

I told my wrath, my wrath did end. (Line 2)

I told it not, my wrath did grow. (Line 4)
And I watered it in fears, (Line 5)
And I sunned it with smiles, (Line 7)
Till it bore an apple bright. (Line 10)
My foe outstretched beneath the tree. (Line 16)

It can be viewed in the following lines above that the writer himself used exaggerated statements to
deliver his feelings and emotions towards the subject. In this way employed by William Blake will
automatically give the readers a strong cloud of emotions.

IV. CONCLUSION

By looking at the results of the different levels, it can be inferred that the writer only used simple yet strong
words to deliver his message; the use of figurative language specifically hyperbole and other literary devices
make the whole text more interesting to read. On the other hand, The Poison Tree pertains to our anger, in
human nature, if we feed our minds with negative thoughts, our anger will soon grow and lead to a worst
one which is why we should learn how to control self and/or ego. In this stylistic analysis, poetic language,
as well as features, have a huge difference from the non-poetic ones in terms of the whole concept of
literature. Thus, the manipulation of language in the poetic system is more complex than in prose division.

V. APPENDIX

A Poison Tree
By William Blake
I was angry with my friend; And it grew both day and night.
I told my wrath, my wrath did end. Till it bore an apple bright.
I was angry with my foe: And my foe beheld it shine,
I told it not, my wrath did grow. And he knew that it was mine.

And I watered it in fears, And into my garden stole,

Night & morning with my tears: When the night had veiled the pole;
And I sunned it with smiles, In the morning glad I see;
And with soft deceitful wiles. My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

As I accomplished this paper, I can profoundly say that the task is indeed challenging as I was having a hard
time analyzing every level, especially the phonological level because you must scrutinize each subpart
meticulously. I never had this kind of experience back in college since we were more on discussing concepts
only and no practical applications; however, this task only tells me that stylistics is no joke and a brain-
draining topic in linguistics. On the flip side, I would like to express my ardent appreciation to our professor
for letting us experience this kind of task, and to reporters who explained comprehensively how this should
be done. Without this task, I will not be able to know once again the different technicalities used in stylistics
and their respective functions, and I will not have an experience of how to analyze a poem from a stylistic
perspective. I am hoping that this will serve as an avenue for me to learn more about the language style
employed by different authors across the world and their respective contexts.

VII. REFERENCES

Style. (n.d.). StudySmarter UK. https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english-literature/literary-

elements/style/

Stylistic Analysis In Literary Studies | ipl.org. (n.d.). https://www.ipl.org/essay/Stylistic-Analysis-In-

Literary-Studies-P3JQE92PC486

Widdowson, H.G. (1975). Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature.London: Longman Group Ltd

Xournals. (n.d.). https://xournals.com/journal/stylistics-study-in-literature-and-language

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeffrey V. Regalario is a public-school secondary teacher who is presently teaching at Antipolo National
High School, City Schools Division Office of Antipolo. He has been teaching for about six years in the field
and fortunately accomplished various Continuous Improvement Projects (CIPs) and Action Research (ARs)
at his school.

He finished his bachelor’s degree at ICCT Colleges Foundation Inc., Cainta Rizal with a degree of Bachelor
of Secondary Education Major in English (BSED). His alma mater also became his training ground when he
started teaching. He spent two years as a college instructor teaching major subjects of Education students
and minor subjects of other bachelor programs.

He is currently studying Master of English Language Teaching (MAELT) at Polytechnic University of the
Philippines-Sta Mesa Manila.