A World in a Grain of Sand

The divine permeates all and defies all. It shines through the smallest and through what is commonly thought the most insignificant. What is most natural is most revealing. Whitman captures this over and over in his great poem “Song of Myself”. And even though the image of Whitman “stucc’d with quadrupeds and birds over” – is bizarre in the extreme, still we get his point. Blake saw the divine everywhere also – he even saw angels in his garden!

From Song of Myself
By Walt Whitman

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the
stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg
of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits,
grains, esculent roots,
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
But call any thing back again when I desire it.

From Auguries of Innocence
By William Blake

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.

“Time, space, and causation are like a glass through which the absolute is seen. . . . In the absolute there is neither time, nor space, nor causation.” Swami Vivekananda