The overall them of the poem is that holding onto to anger, and the supression of emotions in general, has no good outcomes. As stated in previous sections, the poem is a criticism of doctrines of the Anglican Church, one of which happened to be the suppression of sinful emotions, such as wrath. Blake shows in the first two lines that the narrator expressed his anger at his friend and quickly got over it, but he kept his feelings from his foe, which only caused them to build up within him.