Life

Let us go, then

Let us go, then

To where the fresh air chokes on the yellow fog

To where the universe refuses to be disturbed

To where they talk of Michelangelo

To where the coffee spoons measure life

The yellow fog rises to the sky

The yellow fog bends to say goodbye

The yellow fog spreads its wings to fly

The yellow fog, powerless, will soon die

Down this deep blue fjord 

As we watch the rocky coast

We travel on and on

Waiting for the dawn

Down this foreign fjord

With steep islands on both sides

We travel on and on

Hoping for the dawn

This endless, endless fjord

These cruel, crooked coasts

We wander on and on

Careless of the dawn

Let us go then, you and I

To where the day is stretched out tediously like a patient on a table

Like a patient etherized on a table

To where the time is slow, slow, slow

To where the night never comes

To where the bare tree grows lifelessly

To where we will wait, wait, wait

For Godot

We wander on and on

Waiting for the dawn

Hoping for the dawn

Careless of the dawn

Let us go then, Gogo

The door is wide open

I will show you the paths that we must travel

Travel on and on and on and on

For reasons unknown

Certain half-deserted streets

Cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants

And the gloomy October night

Are our little joys

We shall laugh at them, defiant

And the fog

Ah, the fog

We shall scorn how it lingers upon the pools

We shall scorn how it slips by the terrace

We shall scorn how it never rises

How meaningless, the fog!

Only time will tell

Aye, we shall laugh and scorn

Because this is better than the dry, empty days

Where we wait and wait and wait

Where nothing happens 
Nobody comes
Nobody goes

For reasons unknown

No, this is better

Oh, we will dare

Aye, we will dare
We will disturb the universe 

We will barge into the party room

Where nobody comes and nobody goes

Whining of Michelangelo

We will measure our lives with coffee spoons

And we will laugh, delighted

Though we do not know the eyes

Though we do not know the arms

We will see him

Aye, we will see him

We shall not wait any longer for him

But we shall find him

We shall seek him

We shall find him

We shall be a pair of wings
Soaring across the vaults of the majestic skies

We are not Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

They are dead

I am Hamlet, and you are Laertes

True heroes both

We are alive now

And we will be alive after the end of all acts

For we trust in a life stronger than death

No human voices will wake us

For this is no dream

And when we return we will hear silence

Deafening silence

And we will look at once, both of us,

To the bare lifeless tree

And we will see the sudden leaves sprouting on the empty branches

And we will hear, in the silence

An inaudible whisper

'I am life

Visiting this barren tree, your barren lives, 

Bringing hope,

Bringing meaning

I am whom you have sought incessantly

All your lives

I am fulsome life

I am Godot.'

And in a moment we will comprehend

In a moment we will smile through sudden tears

Tears that fall on fertile ground

And we will leave, you and I, to where the sun never sets

Let us go then, you and I, to where the sun never sets.

Listen

Throw your colours to the wind

It doesn't matter anymore

The swirls of crafted artistry that 

Pulse at your masterful fingertips will

Get you nowhere.

Forget the greying, ageing hues

Forget the fading, bending rainbows

Forget the emotion you have recollected

Let the poetry that waits within

The mind to slink out in the same old letters be

Left to itself to slip out unseen

Unheard

Unheard.

Heard melodies are sweet 

But those unheard

Those unheard

Heralding the new day to its fullness is

The joy of a thousand, million birds

Their songs echoing each other's and

Coinciding in one grand chorus of the dawn

Open the eyes of your exuberant thoughts and

See the gentle curve of a smile on the ground waiting

For you to take rein of it, to gallop to seventh heavens

Forget the swirls and the letters and

Listen

Listen to life

Listen to the joyous infinities

Heard melodies are sweet

But those unheard

Those unheard

You thought of sculpting your way into 

The secrets of art

Rest your hammer and chisel and

Stare straight into the gold of the sun

Grab the sun and

Make it your dawn and whisper it out in a 

Tentative symphony

Forget, forget the swirls and the letters

Forget what you remember

Forget your very thoughts

Listen

Listen to life

Listen to a thousand, million whispers of joyous infinities

Heard melodies are sweet

But those unheard are sweeter

For it is sung in silence

And in the silence

You will listen

To life

To the whispers of happy infinities.

A Tale Of Two Birds

It was the best of times,
It was the best of times,
It was the age of wisdom,
It was the age of freedom,
It was the epoch of belief,
It was the epoch of audacity,
It was the season of Light,
It was the season of Flight,
It was the spring of hope,
It was the wing's tightrope,
We had all the skies before us,
We had all the earth below us,
We were all going direct to Heaven,
We were all going direct to new nests,
Nothing could go wrong,
Nothing could go wrong,
Everything was alright,
Everything was alright
I had everything under control,
I had everything under control,
And I was on the top of the world.

                     *

Happy, happy skies

That shine the light of day

So benevolently upon me,

A tiny sparrow!

Aha! I do feel it in my empty bones

That this day is different

Aye, this day shines different!

I feel different!

Today the world is mine to command

It's I who will tell it how to spin!

I fly high above the fluffy floor of the clouds

Not like those other weakling sparrows that ramble o'er the treetops

My wings are stronger,

And I follow the flight of them eagles

Oh, I was meant to be an eagle!

Trick of fate that hatched me in the wrong family

But that doesn't matter

Today is not a day to pout over such trifles

Today we fly,

Putting the world beneath our wings!

Light shines on the sweet layer of clouds

I fly just above it

Above me is the empty blue sky,

A sky emptied of its white cotton jewellery

Winds whistle at me, kindly, of course -

From every side

Below me, through the gaps in my white floor,

I see mankind, sprawled about in flimsy cities and villages

I snort.

If only they could fly like me.

The one-eyed blue face that stares at me, in turn,

From above, never blinks.

I feel so close to that one kind eye of life, the sun

It is just within the reach of my wings

I could reach out if I wanted to, really

If I wanted to...

Oh, that lad Icarus didn't know the first thing about flying

Wings of wax, indeed!

My wings are true,

And when I chose, I will fly towards the one-eyed wonder.

Hm! Where are the eagles, I ask

Where are them who brave the stormy nights to break through to the calmer skies?

Not one of them wanders even below me

All above and all below

It seems to me that I and only I fly

Emptiness is the air about me

Not a feather to be seen in the skies

And -

But what -

Wait

What is this deafening silence that I hear,

This calm before some mighty storm?

My wings flutter, my eyes dart to every side

What is it? What is it?

There is nothing above or below

Am I alone in this fear? 

What is this mighty silence and emptiness?

The clouds scoff at me,

And the sun seems to laugh

And then - silence. A sound of thunder

I gasp - what I see before me is a giant white bird

I mean it - I'm serious!

It's got this huge beak, above it to eyes staring at me

What's really unsettling is that it hasn't a feather - it's all bone

And it's big - as big as ten storm clouds put together

The two wings are shiny and they've each got two big spinning wheels -

And the crazy bird's headed right towards me!!!

I should've stayed in my nest

I should've stayed in my nest, should've, should've aargh!

YIKES! It's right in front of me why is it following me it's got me I'm done for

OUCH. It hits me with its beak. Sure hurts.

Funny, when it bumped into me it seemed like

There were a lot of humans inside it. Hmmm.

What are they doing so high up?

Trying to fly again like that chap with glued-up feathers?!

Sigh. These folks never learn.

Presently, I stop thinking to myself because there's something

That seems a bit more important at hand.

I can't flap my wings.

Seems like I'm gliding downwards 

I check again. Left wing - no answer

Right wing - sleeping. 

The big white bird has done some serious damage

To my aeronautical system -

I can't fly anymore!

Yeoooooww! In the realisation, my brain stops working

And my wings stop flapping

And I'm twirling and whirling down and down

Falling headlong

Aaaaa!

I plummet down the white cloudy floor

The vast green stretches of some part of earth appear before me

I've heard that in the last few moments of your life
Your whole life flashes before you
I see myself as a nestling, crying to my momma for food
In my childhood nest
I see a teenage version of myself arguing
With my dad for permission to get out of the nest
I see myself flying away from home, naively determined to reach the highest heights,
Against the wishes of my parents

And then I stop seeing clips of my life history
And the pretty green pasture that I'm racing onto
Beats the living daylights out of me.
Blank, every thought flies out of my mind
And I'm in a coma or something.
Slowly, I come to my senses, or to what's left of them.
Ouch. That hurt, I think, when I'm able to think again
I look around in a daze,
And it takes sometime to realize that
I'm alive or something

I look around. I'm under a big tree. Green grass towers above me
On my left and right and all around I guess it's the green field
I saw from my previously undignified bird's eye vantage 
I realize that my wings are kind of broken
It'll take time to heal...
In the meantime I guess I'll hop around, explore the town, find places to eat
So for the next few days I do just that.
I make a good old nest, just like the old times
And get a few good pieces of fruit
I don't meet anybird else, though

I have plenty of time to think as I play Robinson Crusoe here, wingwrecked
And I introspect, a lot
I guess it's all my fault that I got in this mess
Was too naively audacious, recklessly optimistic
Should've listened to my parents. Hmmm. Well.
Gotta be more practical and stuff. You know. Prudence and all.
A bird should know where to fly.
The better part of valour is discretion, as they say back at home...
Well, no use moping around, I'll make the best of this -
Heal myself, get my wings, fly high, set the skies on fire again.

Cause I so am gonna get back on the air again.

Memory

I see unmemoried jigsaw bits

Clicked in place together again

In a puzzle of sublime comprehension

In a moment of crystal clear vision

I see thoughts that have been hiding in my mind for centuries.

O Raveloe

Now that winter is come

It seems that spring never was

And never will be again

Spring, awaken from your slumber

Shuffle off the show from your sleeping eyes

Come out from the snow where you hide

Come quickly, lest my golden-haired child stumble

Away from my life into the lives of strangers

Awake, Raveloe!

Listen, I have heard that a bright dawn is risen in your midst

A weaver of sad memories and sweet dreams

Let him see the dawn even if I may not

Take my gold child to where he lives

And let me rest in peace

Light

Eyes burn when they see true light

I see bright morning in Your eyes

And my eyes are afire

Let me be beggar to Your palace,

Where the sky is the roof

And the light is the Sun's 

Then I will whisper that light into my heart of hearts,

And the leaves of my forest will become the flames of new candles.

Death of the Night

It is cold outside

I feel the night shivering in the light

All my fears have fled

There are no nightmares but those that shiver and die.

Who Dares Label Man?

Who dares label man?

Canadian, American, English, French

Italian, African, Japanese, Indian

Chinese, Korean, Russian, Serbian

Who dares raise his voice

To pinpoint a man and say

"This is he."

Black, white, dark, fair - 

What matters the colour

Of the skin of your brother?

Who dares answer?

Have we not heard a thousand, thousand times

That within every man lies the same precious soul?

That coursing within each man's veins is the same red blood?

That behind every pair of human eyes is the same intelligent mind,

Capable of an infinity of thoughts?

Have we not heard?

Have we not heard a thousand times,

A thousand, thousand times those words

And denied entry to those words,

That we are one,

That we are brothers,

That we are equals,

That we are one family of nations?

Each man is capable of the noblest actions

Each man is worthy of the greatest respect

King or beggar -

What does it matter?

Who dares label man?

Who dares answer?

Music Of The Dawn

Listen to the sound of winter’s wind!

Icy as the river it has tamed

The clouds fly o’er in ecstasies of grey

All nature caricature of a tear.

Listen to the quick-hastening storm!

Rumbling like a menacing fire-mount

Jagged white fells earth with splint’ring sound

Existence has donned a weary robe.

Listen to the music of the dawn!

Wrecking light on all that once was dread

The power and the might crush down my fears

I stand strong now for all the night is fled.

Rising from the brilliance of first light

Transfigur’d, I am the Sun, the stars.

Always

This quiet eve

When the sparrows have ceased their songs

When the city has hushed its citizens to restful sleep

When the white sands of the coasts of the afternoon horizons

Are engulfed by the blue seas of the evening

Life stares at me in the eye

Night approaches,

But it is but prologue to an exuberant dawn

Night is a clumsy trick of the eye

The sun is still there

Waiting

Your dawns are inevitable

Your sunrises are permanent

The light will stay still in your skies, child, and dance merrily

When you defy the lies of the sunrises and sunsets

Because there is neither

The sun is always there

Waiting

Beyond the laughing days and tearstained nights

Waiting

Canadian Inuk

I will sing in my language

Of the perils of my wintry life

The snow is deep today, 

The snow is thick

But I will tell you of icy woes that you men know naught about

If you did stare deep within my tired eyes you would see ice,

Numbing snow,

An iceberg

An iceberg,

Just the tip,

A tiny fragment you may stumbling understand

The rest hide

You see it not

Never will

Never will comprehend the minds of the Inuit

Cold was the day I set off alone in search of the elusive whale

Shivering in my sturdy kayak

Armed with just a harpoon

I followed him long

Even when I could not see him

It was days when I at last killed him

And lugged him to the shore

My Inuit tribe fed on the flesh for weeks, 

The elders eating meagerly lest the children starve

If you did stare deep within my tired eyes you would see ice,

Snow,

The tip of an iceberg

When I look at the melting colours of the sky-canvas

I am not afraid like the others

I gaze into it long and deep

And see dancing whales, 

Flying seals,

Swimming birds

Ice-blocks,

Crude igloos,

And snow

Snow

Snow

For we are snow

And the breath that we breathe escapes in steams of ice

Naure is snow for us

And we hold her close to our chests,

Within our iceberg hearts

We do not understand the apathy you foster to her

And you do not understand us

If you did stare deep within my tired eyes you would see the ice,

Melting snow

A sinking iceberg

You do not understand us, cultured man

Do not try to

You never will

Life is Love

Life is a dream sung in a whisper

Let's dance it through brave, hands linked in each other's

There is no death

There'll be no fear

If we are strong, fighting as warriors

Love is a bird, head'd to cold weathers

Let's fly it through brave, for we are the feathers

This is no dream

This is no song

This is true life, knowing we're brothers

This is true life,

And we are all brothers.

Even The Hairs Of Your Head Are Counted

I see what hides 

When day closes its eyes

It is the sleeping sun

Black is the sun at night

Yet it shines, wakeful though sleeping

Open up your eyes

See a drop of the sun in the face of the moon,

Peeping at you through the blanket of a million stars.

God watches those who sleep and dream of restless peace.

William Wordsworth

Today the dawn greeted me with a thousand different songs

Each one a bewilderingly original symphony

The sweet darlings of the dawn,

Those charming angel-birds,

Fling out their pearls into the new day

Their innocent tunes excelling the juxtaposed frequencies

Of the German greats of classic music.

Gentle dawn, stay ever young.

The pleasant chatter of the birds

Are like the racous yet homely invitations of the street vendor

Like the happy cacophony of the marketplace at peak time

Gentle dawn, stay ever young.

Vincent van Gogh

The sky is dark today,

Darker than usual

I do not feel like painting today

I do not feel like a painter today

I feel sick at heart

I want to do nothing with those canvases.

What use has any of art been to me, I ask myself, bitterly.

It has only wasted my time and deluded me, so it appears

Perhaps I should never have walked away from God

Art seems to have cheated me

No one even recognises the little talent I have

No one knows me

I may never be great like Rembrandt, my inspiration

I may never be known

Perhaps it is better so

Was it not I myself who reflected and wrote that 

One must lose oneself to gain oneself?

Christ Jesus, whisper again those illumining words of wisdom

To this poor struggling man

Let me pass away like shadows 

Chanced upon by brilliant light

I see only the darkness of my Starry Night

On these sullen skies

No twirling lights illumine my imagination

Let these shadows that are always with me be lit

By every light, by every star

May I see what I ought to

And not what I imagine

'Colours are there for a reason',

One man once taught me

Those secrets of art evade me

I am no artist

I am perhaps a ne'er-do-well

And my name may not even outlive my death

But Thou, 

O Christ Jesus, be Thou my light

Be Thou the light of every colour to me

And that will suffice for me.

The rest I leave unto Thee

For generations come and generations go,

Artists rise and artists fall,

But Thou art ever constant.

And that is enough for me.

What is more brilliant than 

The beauty of my paintings is

The Beauty of my God.

Thou are infinite, inexhaustible, ever-new Beauty, and 

Thou, O Lord, art enough for me.

And the rest, I leave unto Thee

Jonah

I will not stay here anymore
I will leave this very evening
I leave behind my family
But I may see them again
What weighs heavy on my mind now is peace
I seek it like a tired bird seeking needful rest
I will leave all that I have ever known to find that precious nest
I leave this evening
No qualms detain me
Nor ever will!
I cannot hide no longer
I must escape
Those words echo again:
'Go to the great city of Nineveh,
And preach against it.'
I shut my eyes and hide from the world
Now
This night
This night,
I tell myself.
Patience
                                                                     *
The stars are fearful this evening
They glare at me;
The darkening sky warns me

I look back at my homeland, Israel
All that I had ever known
The paradise where I spent my happy childhood
But now that I have fallen,
I have decided it,
And I can remain here no longer

Night falls like a hawk
The dawn will find me far away

I, Jonah, son of Ammitai,
Leave my nation this night
It is from God that I run away
I am afraid.
Help me, Israel, my homeland, and be always my mother
For now I am all alone
No family to shelter me
No home to protect me
And I cannot say whether God will watch over me
For it is from God that I run away
And I am afraid

'Go to the great city of Nineveh,
And preach against it.'

I, Jonah, son of Ammitai,
Leave Israel tonight
I look back
I see the familiar paths,
That sleeping tree,
Those peaceful homes,
The safe neighborhood
My silent friends
I whisper painful farewells.
Forgive me, sweet night
Forgive me, gentle breeze
Forgive me, watchful stars
I cry.
I look at the loving homes,
The swaying trees,
And the sleeping city one last time
Tears flow down my cheeks,
Through my heart

Treading strange paths
Thorough an unknown world,
I reach Joppa in the dead of night
Here it is I was told I could board the ship
I will wait here

'Go to the great city of Nineveh,
And preach against it.'

The harbor is silent
It looks onto the gentle waters, watching for the next ship
I watch with it
I seat myself on a broken plank of wood,
My feet touching the grains of sand.
I take a handful in my hand
And watch them falling down,
One by one
There are many grains of sand
So many
But they do not seem hopeful this night.

They promise me nothing

Tears flow down my cheeks and through my heart
My empty heart
I rest my head on my arm, crying

A cold wind blows, bringing to me the salt of the sea
The waters are peaceful this night
As if they are reminding me of the evasive peace that I seek

Will God forgive me

I pull my cloak around myself
It is cold and I am tired of waiting
Perhaps I should go back
Perhaps I can leave another day
No one would have noticed my absence

But look!
The ship arrives.
It is there, to the east
A mere shadow in the moonlit night
Still noiseless
It is time
They have come
It is time to go to the far west,
To Tarshish,
Where I will find rest
It is time.

The Language of Paradox in William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker who lived from 1757 to 1827.  Blake is now considered quite an influential poet of the Romantic Age. The uniqueness of his poetry makes it difficult to classify him. His notable works include Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Four Zoas, Jerusalem, and Milton. 

The poem Auguries of Innocence is a poem from one of William Blake's notebooks now known as The Pickering Manuscript. Assumed to have been written in 1803, it was not published until 1863. The poem is basically a string of paradoxes which juxtapose innocence with corruption. It can also be seen as a paralleling of innocence and experience, an important theme in Blake’s poems. The poem is 132 lines and has been published with and without breaks that divide the poem into stanzas. An augury is a sign or omen.

The poem begins with these memorable lines allegedly defining imagination:

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.

At the beginning itself a parallel of the spiritual and the trivial is perceived. The poet takes trivial objects like a grain of sand, a wild flower, a hand, and an hour and compares it with lofty ideals. It is impossible to perceive an entire world in such an ordinary thing as a grain of sand. The heavens and the crude wild flower are at first glance diametrically opposing and unrelated things. ‘Infinity’ and ‘eternity’ are metaphysical, abstract concepts that one cannot sense with the human form. But the poet juxtaposes both the fundamental and trivial in four pairs. Thus at the onset itself, the reader finds himself on a sort of bridge linking the material world and the spiritual world. Seen in the light of Blake’s recurrent themes and the title of the poem, it may be perceived more accurately as a link between innocence and experience – the innocence of childhood and the experience of a perhaps blemished adulthood. These four lines thus set the stage for the numerous later contrasts.

The next 42 lines deal with various images related to a wide array of twenty-four birds, animals, and insects.  We see caged birds, starving dogs, misused horses, hunted hares, wounded skylarks, lions’ howls, wrens in pain and oxen in wrath. The consequences of such cruel imagery are the other half of the imagery – such deeds result in heaven’s rage, God’s vengeance, and the cherubim ending his song. Blake probably draws on such imagery to build up a narrative of childlike innocence, as he is wont to do. In each case, he shows that innocence being wounded or made captive. In the later lines Blake wanders into the realm of man.

Two imageries show beautiful innocent birds caged. The consequence of each is what seems to be at first a far-fetched conclusion, but this language of paradox makes the initial imprisonment of such innocent birds a vile deed. Caging a robin redbreast, Blake says, ‘puts all heaven in a rage’; dove-houses filled with birds shames evil itself. Read in the context of the American and French Revolutions, it is seen as a denouncement of slavery.

We shall see three of these metaphors as juxtapositions of extremes.

A dog starv'd at his master's gate

                               Predicts the ruin of the state.           (Lines 9-10)

Before delving into the paradox of a starving dog resulting in the ruin of an entire country, the background for this prophetic statement is required. Blake lived shoulder to shoulder with the two great Revolutions of the time, and he witnessed the rebellion of the common man against unjust dominant classes. He saw an entire civilization fold into itself in neighbouring France. Blake allegedly regretted that the same rebellion did not happen in England, where similar injustices against the poor were happening. In England at the time social status was still the rule of the day; the poor were always poor and the rich were always rich. 

In this line Blake brings to the reader’s mind the innocent picture of a dog who is unwaveringly loyal to his master. But the picture is shattered it is realized that this devoutness is not reciprocated. The master doesn’t care for the dog – he lets it starve. He is indifferent when he sees it just outside his gate. This indifference to the dog’s loyalty is of course a cruel and inhumane thing to do. But the consequence of such a deed seen in ordinary light is that the dog dies, the master gets away with this deed perhaps with a slightly wounded conscience, and from the moral perspective it may be imagined that the man would later in life face the consequences for the misdeed. But Blake almost indifferently avoids all of them and arrives at what seems to be an entirely unrelated conclusion - the starved dog foretells the destruction of the entire state. This is reminiscent of the line ‘What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?’ from John Donne’s Canonization. A starved dog cannot logically result in a ruined state in the same way the Donne’s sighs cannot drown merchant’s ships. There seems to be an invisible chain of events resulting in the said conclusion resembling the ‘Butterfly effect’. Such a deed makes considerable changes in the spiritual realm and will end in the fragmentation of the State. The reader may think that such a statement is rather far-fetched, but this unequal juxtaposition hints at the underlying admonition of the poet that such a deed will shatter the existing societal structure just at the same way one flap of a butterfly’s wings in one place supposedly sets off a tornado in another place.

Through this statement Blake sets off a silent warning to the dominant classes of 19^th century England. If they continue to oppress the lower classes, they would see their world crumble to pieces. The lines can also be seen as the perception of the starving of a dog from an innocent child’s point of view, the child would prophesize grave consequences. It can also be seen as an attack on slavery, which was abolished in Britain only three decades after the poem was penned.

A skylark wounded in the wing,

                               A cherubim does cease to sing.   (Lines 15-16)  
  
 These lines similarly draw a link between a skylark that is wounded in the hunt and a cherubim that ceases to sing.
Later lines abruptly start on a set of philosophic reflections. The next paradoxical statement that can be seen is

The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,

                                Does to rags the heavens tear.     (Lines 75-76) 
   
Here another contradiction is seen. How can the fluttering rags of a beggar tear the heavens to pieces? The implications of the impoverishment of the roadside beggar on the heavenly realm are startling. But the ethical and spiritual perspective is violently forced upon the reader, and there is a final reconciliation; there is an acceptance on the part of the reader of the truth behind the statement. Finding the sudden combination of the imageries of a beggar’s rags and a torn-apart heavens is startling, but it is necessary in Blake’s language of poetry.

Later on in the poem after numerous other proverbial paradoxes Blake returns to his meditations on life, destiny, and grandly ends stating that in the spiritual realm God appears in human form, possibly referring to Jesus Christ.

The poem is a delightful example of coherently simple but transcendentally beautiful poetry. Unfortunately it lacks unity on the whole. The beginning four lines set the tone for the entire poem and each of the following separate ‘proverbs’ may each be seen as illustrations of ‘the world in a grain of sand’ or ‘a heaven in a wild flower’. They are picture-perfect images, but nothing links them together except perhaps the title of the poem. It is only at the end of the poem that the poet shakes himself from the monotony of recurring proverbs and arrives at a reconciliation.

Read in the light of Blake being considered both a madman and a visionary, it is interesting. At the end he seems to be wanting the reader to understand and imbibe his own spiritual worldview. The poem can also be seen as a pointilistic portrait of individually coherent but collectively incoherent images. But then, most critics are of the opinion that the poem is a collection of unorganized poetic drafts that was never really meant to see the light of publication.