A Grain of Sand

A Grain of Sand

If starry space no limit knows
And sun succeeds to sun,
There is no reason to suppose
Our earth the only one.
‘Mid countless constellations cast
A million worlds may be,
With each a God to bless or blast
And steer to destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so
To guide each vital stream,
With over all to boss the show
A Deity supreme.
Such magnitudes oppress my mind;
From cosmic space it swings;
So ultimately glad to find
Relief in little things.

For look! Within my hollow hand,
While round the earth careens,
I hold a single grain of sand
And wonder what it means.
Ah! If I had the eyes to see,
And brain to understand,
I think Life’s mystery might be
Solved in this grain of sand.

Robert William Service

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Analysis

In the poem, ‘A Grain of Sand’, the poet expresses his incredulity about life. He is bewildered as well as amazed at the same time, as to what is the truth about life and existence. Besides imagining the world as it is perceived, he raises doubts as to what could be conceivable. He explores the possibilities of the probable truth. Our planet Earth is only one among a million of others. There may be countless number of planets and galaxies within our universe. Who might know, there may be many such parallel universes. Every world might each have a different God to govern the destiny of mankind.

The poet provokes us to think how this world functions. Millions of Gods must be guiding each one of us. These many Gods must be an integral elements having originated from a Supreme Deity, who rules the cosmos. This ‘magnitude’ overwhelms the poet’s consciousness.

Ultimately he comes to envision and realize that the resolution to all the queries lies in the simplest of things in the world. It is the little things that we find consolation in. He asks us to visualize a single tiny grain of sand within his hollow palm while the earth rotates on its tilted axis. He wonders as to what significance it holds in a universe that is infinitely vast. A single granule of sand could possess the answer to life; to existence. If only we had the ability to perceive it and a mind to comprehend it, we would have unraveled the mystery of life. The poet is mystified as well as astounded simultaneously as to how the minuscule of things could hold such divine truth. The poet, very beautifully, fits in the metaphor of sand in this context, where only a grain of sand embodies the truth of life. The tiny grist typifies the actual reality that man is in search of.

It narrows down to the search of ultimate truth which is God, the sole creator. He has revealed only a part of himself. There is still a huge part of him that the humanity is still incognizant of. Whatever little that we can know of him is hidden in little things of nature that we humans often fail to realize. The poet concludes by saying that the ultimate verity may be contained in something as mysterious as a raindrop or a grain of sand.

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Sushreeta Sahoo
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