Wednesday, June 19, 2013


"Eternity" and "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake


I have recently been reading the poems of William Blake as selected by Peter Butter (Barnes & Noble, 1996), and this poem Eternity jumped out at me as unusual:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

Very modern and Zen of Blake, isn't it? And given that he lived and wrote in the Georgian period, it's quite an out-of-the-box imaginative expression.

Here's a Zen moment in the poem Auguries of Innocence by Blake:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

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