Essay #2

Thomas Rydzewski

Professor Candia

English 102

March 7, 2012

            Poets use their strong grammar and creative minds in order to convey their readers to understand what hides behind the stories they create. Within every piece of poetry there is always an untold story that lies behind its original figure just waiting to be discovered. A great piece of poetry that tells an untold story is “To See a World in a Grain of Sand” by William Blake. This poem really was able to capture the meaning of a creative and inspirational writer that was able to write very little in this poem, but mean so much more. His strong grammar in his poems really captures the reader’s eyes into finding out his untold mystery.

            To begin, William Blake used his own creativity in order to express his huge meaning of his poem in such little amounts of words. In the very first line of his poem “To see a world in a grain of sand” (1), Blake used a metaphor by comparing the world to a grain of sand. Blake was using this metaphor to create the image in a readers mind that the world is similar to a grain of sand due to its round and rocky shape. Also the image of how unpredictable both the world and a grain of sand really is because you never big or small the two of them could be. Right from the beginning Blake uses a literary term in his poem in order to instantly grab the reader and bring him into the story Blake wants to tell. The imagery Blake uses throughout this piece of work really shows his strong creativity and unique character.

            Another amazing line from William Blake’s poem “And a heaven in a wild flower” (2) really expressed his second type of metaphor. He used the same type of literary term in order to make the similarity towards heaven and a wild flower. Blake used the two in order to build off of his first line and create yet another image in the reader’s mind that a wild flower, being unpredictable and all different shapes and colors, could define what heaven could possibly be like. No one understands heaven or could describe it to anyway and that’s why Blake compares the two being so unpredictable and mysterious in their own specific way. Blake tries to give an image to the reader of both heaven and earth and how they can both be metaphorically similar to certain everyday things. Blake tries to convince his readers that the biggest things can have the smallest meaning when the smallest things can have the biggest meaning.

            Yet another line from William Blake’s poem “Hold infinity in the palm of your hand” (3) really sets a different mood in his story. Blake sets an image for the readers to think about being able to hold infinity, virtually holding the world in the palm of your hand. It’s almost as if his metaphor here is giving the readers the opportunity to become god himself and also bring you back to the previous two lines and get you to put all his untold pieces together like a puzzle.

            Finally the last piece of William Blake’s poem showed his strong grammar skills and his creative way to bring the reader into his story and make them think. The final line of his short but meaningful poem really put the whole story together, “And eternity in an hour.” (4) This ending line helped set up his previous lines in his poem to finish his untold story. This whole poem together grabbed the reader into thinking more than just sand, wild flowers, and the world around it but brought everything together to make it whole. Blake used his metaphors in order to show the readers that the largest things in the world could have the smallest meaning and the smallest things in the world could have the largest meanings.

            In this poem “To see a World in a Grain of Sand” by William Blake he was able to create through literary terms of simply metaphors that the world is too big to fit in the palm of someone’s hands and a person cannot control everything. Blake’s untold story was hidden behind his poem and without his grabbers that brought the readers into his work; no one would be able to understand his poems just like many writers and their poems as well. William Blake wrote this particular poem to convey his readers that having too much on your plate isn’t good and having just enough to handle to and be able to swallow is better for you to understand. All poetry serves its own purpose to tell different messages to their readers.