"Auguries of Innocence" is a poem about perception, as is much of Blake's work. This poem lists seemingly impossible sights to an experienced eye (the world in grain of sand, for instance) that the innocent perceive routinely. To extend the poem beyond that first line, we see further paradoxes:
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 Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr' all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
To Blake and the Romantics, innocence and childhood are usually synonymous, and a child might well see in something as minute as a grain of sand the wonder of the universe or in a flower that an adult easily passes by an image of Heaven. These are intellectual and spiritual orientations, and the person of experience is blind and numb to the potential for wonder all around. As a result, the adult or experienced person grows numb to injustices such as the starving dog. If a grain of sand can reveal a world, a starving dog can indict a society.
The poem continues for several lines, falling into an almost trance-line condemnation of contemporary life and its degradation. These are auguries of doom. The poem ends with a stronger affirmation of this claim about the importance of choosing our mode of perception in spiritual terms:
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day
Blake’s opening line is a way of saying that every part of the natural world is important, and that we humans are connected to all of it. The foundations of our planet are rock and water. Sand represents both entities. These grains are tiny bits of rock that have been worked upon by the centuries-long action of water. So, yes, they are indeed representative of the world, in the physical sense. And if you look at a handful of sand, you can see variety and diversity in the size and shape and origin of the particles – mirroring the range of people who populate our earth. Yet from a distance, the sand on a beach looks like a solid surface made up of only one color. The individual and unique grains coalesce to form that whole. This is an apt metaphor and lesson for us. We ARE the grains of sand. I see us here. Do you?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence
No comments:
Post a Comment