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”
William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” Pickering Manuscript, c. 1803; first published 1863
Documented source
Attribution
William Blake
Source
William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” Pickering Manuscript, c. 1803; first published 1863
In full
“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”
Status
Public domain in the United States
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About this line
Blake wrote “Auguries of Innocence” as a long, unbroken chain of paradoxes — a caged robin, a starving dog at its master’s gate, a skylark wounded in the wing. Each couplet is its own world, and each world is evidence for the same argument: that cruelty in small things and cruelty in large things are the same cruelty. The four opening lines are the thesis. The rest of the poem — more than a hundred lines — is the proof.
Why we carry this line
Lots know the first four lines; almost no one knows they open a much longer argument. I wanted the part that survived — and a pointer back to the rest. And a family member who did not know the four lines, loves it. That’s why we carry.
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