Grain of Sand — Blake Journal

“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,” c. 1803. From the Pickering Manuscript; first published 1863.

By trade, William Blake was an engraver — hired, exacting, repetitive work. On his own time he wrote and illustrated poems arguing that the whole world could be read in a single grain of sand. “Auguries of Innocence” is one of them, written around 1803 and never published in his lifetime.

Blake kept this poem in a manuscript for years; it didn’t reach print until 1863, decades after his death. A journal with the quatrain on the cover is built for the same kind of work — close attention to small things, the practice of looking until the small turns out to be large.

The Design

The full quatrain on a black hardcover — four lines, no punctuation, each major noun capitalized the way Blake wrote them: World, Sand, Heaven, Wild Flower, Infinity, Eternity. The attribution sits beneath in italic. The poem is the cover.

Also on the Grain of Sand Tee, Grain of Sand Mug, and Grain of Sand Tumbler. More Blake: Soar High Journal.

About This Journal

• 5.5″ × 8.5″ hardcover — 120 lined pages, acid-free paper
• Elastic band closure, ribbon bookmark, lay-flat binding

Who It’s For

The writer who finds the big things in the small ones. The keeper of close observations. The person who understands that a notebook is where infinity starts — one sentence at a time.

Open it. Look closely. Write what you see.

William Blake, in Plain English

• Lived 1757–1827, in and around London
• Wrote and hand-produced his own illuminated books — designing, engraving, printing, and coloring each one himself
• Credited the relief-etching method he used to a vision of his late brother, Robert
• His wife, Catherine, learned to read and print to work alongside him; she assisted with his books for decades
• “Auguries of Innocence” runs 132 lines — the opening quatrain is the part that’s remembered; the 128 lines of couplets that follow are rarely quoted
• Largely overlooked in his lifetime; recovered in the 1860s and now among the most-quoted poets in English