can anyone help me explain the poem "to see the world in a grain of sand" by william blake?

The poem "Auguries of Innocence" is a poem full of paradoxes. It brings up situations that are unfathomable in our realm of human understanding. Our minds are capable of many things, but not all things are readily understandable.

One such paradox is the idea of holding infinity in a finite space. Infinity is also an idea that is not tangible or able to be felt, thus it cannot be held in side of anything, especially our hands. Another paradox in this poem is very much alike the above mentioned. It too has to do with a humanly ungraspable concept. The ability to hold an immeasurable amount of time within an hour, which can be measured, is in the human mind impossible. This poem resents many interesting ideas. All of the situations may be possible but are almost impossible to be understood. This shows that the human mind is not the ultimate thinking machine. It also shows that not every thing is meant to be understood. However if we look at this from a different angle one can see that maybe it takes time for human knowledge to develop and obtain a higher understanding of life and nature.

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.

–William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence.”

As the planets located at the farthest reaches of the solar system, Neptune and Pluto–both invisible to the naked eye when viewed from the earth–seem ideally suited as symbols for the archetypal realm of the collective unconscious. In astrology, they symbolize profound yet hidden processes of psychic transformation. While Pluto has a shatter­ing effect (yang) upon consciousness (breaking apart outworn personality traits; transforming the ego and enabling it to sustain substantially “heavier charges,” e.g., traumatic life experience), Neptune exerts a “dissolving” effect (yin) on the foundations of consciousness. Through Neptune, consciousness is no longer sharply focused through the singular point of the ego. Instead, we experience a “diffused” state of awareness. Empathy toward others; dream states; clairvoyance; meditation; creative imagination: all fall under the category of such “nonego” states. The thread running through all such phenomena is an in-depth, transpersonal imagination: the image-generating power of the collective uncon­scious.

In its negative function, Neptune prevents the ego from fully forming or maturing or leaves an aspect of the ego-complex permanently “out of focus.” Uncertainty of purpose (e.g., regarding career or identity) will result. While Pluto depletes the ego of its strength through a “shattering” manifestation of the Divine Will or through the revelation of a difficult-to-digest truth, in its negative form, Neptune, the god of the sea, submerges the ego: dissolving its foundation; blurring its perceptions; inhibiting its ability to discern and discriminate; and leaving it prey to the “denizens of the deep”: the destructive forces of the archetypal unconscious.

In its positive expression, the Neptunian “dissolving and diffusing” process results in extending the perimeters of soul. One of the ego’s functions is to limit the range of sense perception by narrowing the focal point of conscious­ness.1 This prevents us from being overwhelmed by what surrounds us; it allows us to focus upon one thing at a time. Through the medium of imagination, Neptune relaxes this pinpoint concentration and helps us to interact with broader aspects of the supramaterial realm.4

Neptune symbolizes a direct experience of the Sacred Absolute. Indeed, much of the language used to describe this ineffable process is borrowed from mystical liter­ature and spiritual tradition, which honors the nonrational experiences that move us and which are impossible to express in a literal, direct manner.

We should bear in mind, however, that all the planets (even Saturn!) describe aspects of the sacred. While Pluto transforms and regenerates the ego, Neptune relieves us of ego constraints in direct proportion to our capacity to grow more yielding, recep­tive, and open to things that take us “beyond ourselves” (and to miraculously return from such nonego states with our ego intact, healthy, and rebounding). Through Neptune, we realize the potential elasticity of consciousness: its ability to stretch beyond ordinary boundaries and to seemingly transcend itself. Therefore, Neptune increases the permeability of the ego-complex. If we can overcome a fear of “dissolving,” the ego is expanded beyond its everyday limits.

Empathy and compassion are typical phenomena that develop as a result of the Neptune effect. While Pluto rules “objective truth and in-depth comprehension of a Divine Self,” Neptune rules empathy with other sen­tient creatures, particularly in the spiritual context of empathizing with the world soul. Through Neptune, we feel the divine nature in ourselves or experience a sense of merging with the soul of a person, place, or thing. Neptune’s transcendence of ego-boundaries leads to ecstasy, grace, rapture, or bliss: states that are difficult to describe with words and that are transpersonal, extratemporal, or divine in nature.

Such extraordinary states of consciousness are typically expressed with symbols (much like those experienced in dreams). Traditionally, Neptune is associated with the image-generating aspect of the psyche. It also rules the constantly evolving imagery found within the universe itself (and the image-less phenomena of gravity and of interstellar space). In the phenomenal world, every object we perceive–rock, bird, plant, sky–is also an “image”: an “imagined” means of perception. Though we cannot perceive the subatomic world, we “imagine” we perceive matter in its objectively real state. Yet, such images communicate a metaphoric essence: they “imaginatively” describe the nature of the object we perceive.

As the ruler of imagination, Neptune describes how we perceive and, therefore, conceive of the immaterial world, i.e., what we imagine reality to be. (The Latin root of the word perceive means “to grasp thoroughly.”)2

Comment: WTF!!! wahaha!!!

I think he is saying that one can find vast truths in the smallest of things - or to put it in fashionable literary terms, he's dealing with the microcosmic as representative of the universal. So, knowledge of the whole world can be gained from examining its smallest constituent part, or later on, even such a small thing as a caged robin is an affront to both God and man - it's a tiny thing but it's symptomatic, and absolutely representative of the whole.

Not wanting to get too "Twilight Zone" here, but from the little I understand of today's mathematics and physics, looking at Chaos Theory and the Mandelbrot set, Blake is indeed more literally right than he probably knew. The tiniest part of something does apparently indeed represent the entire construct, and the smallest thing can indeed have a huge effect.

Try the William Blake Reader, available at public libraries.

Blake says a lot in this poem. I'll try to break it down by line(s) and explain a bit and hopeflly it will help.

"To see a world in a grain of sand"-He's calling for people to see that even the smallest of things has a place in this world. Every stone, every pebble, every speck of dirt makes up earth. That even a single grain of sand has a purpose, it has it's own "world" within ours. It shapes the outcome of earth, and though it's a small part of a larger whole (the beach) that it still functions. He's calling attention to something which people might think is insignificant, he's calling for an understanding and an appreciation of nature, even in it's smallest form.

"And Heaven in a wild flower"- Blake is saying to take time to "stop and smell the roses" to appreciate the beauty of nature. He's saying that Heaven can be right here on earth, beauty is everywhere in nature, we just have to take the time to see it.

"Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour"- Blake is playing with time here. The grain of sand is infinite, how long has it been here, how much longer after we are gone will it be there? That when one stops and appreciates all around them, sees the devine in nature, they are holding infinity in their hand...they see the preasent, they see the future, they are seeing past the mortal ideals of time and glimpsing the grand scheme. The earth will be here after we are nothing more than dust. Respect it, what would be an eternity for us (a lifetime) is but an hour in the time of the world. Our lives are but a single drop in the oceans of time.

The next two stanzas starting with "A robin redbreast..." is talking about respecting our fellow inhabitants on this earth, the animals. To not cage those things that should be free (the Robin), to not misuse those which have been put here for our companionship (the starved dog), to not abuse those that have been put here to help us in our labor (the horse abused upon the road), to not bring animals into battles that are not there's to fight (the horse for war), to take pity on animals that suddenly find themselves without a master (the widow's cat and beggars dog), and that those things poisonous (the newt and snake) are here hecause of Envy's foot (this i believe is a direct allusion to Satan, the serpent in Eden). Blake is saying that every wrong done to these animals he lists is an abomination to God. That as fellow creatures of the earth they need to be treated with care and respect.

"A truth that's told with bad intent

Beats all the lies you can invent"- Here blake is saying to be gentle with eachother. To tell someone something that you know will harm them purposely is far worse than anything falacy you could possibly dream up.

"It is right it should be so

Man was made for joy and woe" -Everyone will have ups and downs in their life. Who is to say what is right and wrong, that is not our lot. We were made for both happiness, but our lives will be marked with hardships and tragedy, such is life...that's what it is to exist. Noone can say who deserves what happens to who, we are all just coexisting.

"And when this we rightly know

Thro the world we safely go" -When we understand that life is made of ups and downs, and God is not out to get us, when we stop blaming other people for our miseries and short-commings and being angry with God for the bad cards we are dealt, rather than happy with all there is around us, all the beauty, all the wonder, all the animals, then life will go a lot more smoothly. When we realize how small each of us is in the big scheme of things, when we see everyone and everything has it's place and its reason, when we stop pointing fingers and trasferring blame and just be happy that we are alive and that we've been given so much, then life will be good.

In the last Stanza Blake is saying, basically, there is always someone out there worse off than yourself. Some are born into misery, that it happens every day. Some are born to misery, some to happiness, but that it's up to you to change your fate. You can either accept that as your lot, or you can change it. You can either rise above what you are given, or you can let it shrink your spirit. The ones that never understand all that is around them, are never grateful for the small things, that make up the grand picture, they are the ones who are born to endless night.

I hope this helped!

I read the poem and it's kinda crazy. I think william blake was under the influence of mind altering substances.

Seriously though, I think part of his point is that one can find things of great proportions in things that seem little.

The message in the poem is to stop viewing the world quickly without closer inspection.

"

is to hold Eternity in your hand."Asher(?)" got it down just right. Blake is a funny fella though..