A World In a Grain of Sand - Posts From the Past and Today (August 2019)

Sorting through my bookcase yesterday, I came across "The Golden Treasury of Longer Poems - selected and edited by Ernest Rhys" published in 1939 and reprinted in 1950. 

This book is my Dad's copy, purchased for "3 and 3" (3 shillings & 3 pence) on  8/4/55 and is suitably annotated throughout in his neat, tiny handwriting. I think that if it was a font on a computer 'app' it would be size 8 ... without magnification of the screen or document. How he managed to write so clearly and accurately amazes me ; mainly with a fountain/cartridge pen and ink and only much later with a ballpoint or 'Biro', as we called them. I still do. My grandfather's handwriting was even smaller than this and I remember him clearly using a magnifying glass as he wrote - but this is a post for another time.

Of course, once the Longer Treasury was in my hands it stayed there a while as I refreshed my mind on Gibson, Binyan Byron and many other of the "greats" from times passed.

Then I came to Blake, and one of my long time favourites, and also felt that I must have posted on Write Place blog about this at some point and needed to refresh myself on this too - a post from the past and one for today with updated thoughts.

My Dad had not annotated this particular poem by  William Blake. Perhaps because the sentiments are pretty clear and the language not too olde worlde and anyway poetry should be interpreted by the individual reader, I believe.

Basically, the idea I think is that any little thing in the world - a grain of sand, a flower -  contains some sort of greater cosmic truth if you are able to look at it with enough energy and imagination. A wildflower is a miniature heaven, a grain of sand is a miniature world… and every person and other living thing, in Blake's view, is a miniature of the Divine Human or "Human Form Divine," which he identified with Jesus. The metaphors Blake uses in the rest of the poem are like worlds hidden in grains of sand. A robin in a cage is derived of its freedom, crushed by a tyranny of the  powerful, human or otherwise...

Relevant today as always.  What do you think ? 

William Blake
"To See a World..."

(Fragments from "Auguries of Innocence")

 To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour.
A Robin Redbreast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage.

A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.
A Horse misused upon the Road
A Dog starved at his Master’s Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A fiber from the Brain does tear.
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
The Beggar’s Dog and Widow’s Cat,
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar.
Poison gets from Slander’s tongue.
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.
The Gnat that sings his Summer song 
Beats all the Lies you can invent.
The poison of the Snake and Newt
Is the sweat of Envy’s Foot.
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Thro’ the World we safely go.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for Joy and Woe;
And when this we rightly know
Every Night and every Morn

Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.