Musing On Grains of Sand

Very short this - really just a thought written down so I don't forget it. For some reason unknown today, Edgar Allan Poe's 'A Dream Within A Dream' came to me today. It was published in 1849: 

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

And immediately I connected it with William Blake's 'Auguries on Innocence', the relevant text I recall from Jacob Bronowski, in 'The Ascent of Man' (btw commissioned by the then David Attenborough)

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. 

 

etc. 

 

 Blake wrote this in 1803 but it was only published after his death in 1863.

 

Both deal with life - one describing loss, the other wonder, but both use grains of sand. For myself, I was more drawn to Blake's 'Heaven in a Wild Flower' which, for someone of an evolutionary ecology leaning, sums up organic life.

 

Later ... I didn't get around to posting the above as a short blog before I ventured off to Ireland.

 

The crossing was super - flat sea and full sun made it clear just how populated the seas are with creatures. Although I'm not a birder I did work out that shearwaters were very common a few miles off the coast of Ireland, as were gannets. I put a picture on flickr which gives a little more information.

 

Blake from a Death Mask

Arriving in Ireland, the heat was not much less than that in Kent and the day after I arrived we just took things easy, in the hope that the next day might be better, but it was the same and blustery, so Pamela and I in boy mode took the train to Dublin to visit the National Gallery, one of my favourites places. I wanted to view more of Jack B Yeats' pictures as my brushwork has started to loosen and I thought I could pick up ideas, but I was waylaid by the William Blake Exhibition: 

 Only about a quarter of the art was by Blake as the exhibition covered him and his contemporaries who either inspired him, or were inspired by him, in the 'Age of Romantic Fantasy'. It was interesting in understanding how the Gothic of later years must have evolved. I have always been ambivalent about Blake's imagery, but seeing it the 'flesh' was fascinating, as well as seeing some of the contemporaneous works, including Turner.

 

 

 

 

There has been far less dressing this trip, partly because of the unseasonal temperatures, but partly also because we shall be meeting up with Jenny Turner in a couple of weeks. Tomorrow, I head off to do some sightseeing and walking in Co. Mayo, but today is the 2nd anniversary of Pauline's death and we are going out for a meal in memory of her. I said to Pamela when I wanted to do this that it wasn't to be sad and that we could have whatever we wanted as the meal was being paid for by someone who has joined the Choir Invisible (cue Monty Python Parrot Sketch). Of course, there has been another side to today as I emailed Pauline's sister today and the tears welled up.

 

I'll finish for now, not with Blake, or Poe, but Jack's brother, WB Yeats, writing of love unfulfilled:

 

Tread softly for you tread upon my dreams