Abstract
This paper investigates and realigns William Blake's short, little known but hugely enigmatic poem “A Poison Tree” along the indices of his complex relationship with the Christian doctrine. A Poison Tree published in 1794 is a poem that is little understood even today given its cryptic and aporic imagery laden with irony and allusion. The unbridled vindictive passions of Blake's double work draw unapologetically from his views on temperance and restraint. I shall try to read Blake's poem like a detective suspecting the worst in literature as in life – without deception there is no plot and no progression. That the poem inverts the schema of good and bad, God and devil, Heaven and Hell, friend and foe, speaker and listener, writer and reader is the major argument of the paper.
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