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Figures of Speech
Poets use different figures of speech to convey the message of their works. Some poets use metaphors or similes to baffle the mind and force the body to feel and see the images created while others use paradox, hyperboles, or puns to create the same effect. A good poem should involve all the senses and make the mind work to find meaning. William Blake uses metaphors to make the mind work overtime to find multiple meanings in his work “To See a World in a Grain of Sand”, while Chidiock Tichborne uses paradox to baffle the mind and reiterate the single meaning in his work “Elegy, Written With His Own Hand Before His Execution”.
“To See a World in a Grain of Sand” by William Blake is a short poem that is filled with deep meaning. Through the use of metaphors and word choice the work seems lengthy to the mind but short to the eye. A metaphor is “a statement that one thing is something else, but in a literal sense it is not” (Kennedy 817). A metaphor is filled with suggestion giving a simple line of poetry almost infinite meanings.
“To See the World in a Grain of Sand” (1) is a statement that is loaded with suggestion. There are many similarities between a grain of sand and the world such as: the world is made up of many grains of sand, both are round, and both are the same material to name a few. The two objects are also so different that that the line of poetry leaves the mind scrambling to figure out the meaning of this word combination. To figure out the meaning one must look at the literal meanings of the words and the figurative meaning of the word combinations to unscramble the riddle.
On the literal level one must look at the key words in the line such as world, grain, and sand and find their definitions and how they relate to the other words in the line. By definition world is “the Earth or Universe” grain is “a relatively small particle” and sand is “loose grains of worn or disintegrated rock” (On Line Dictionary). The connotations of these words in the context of this line help the brain to understand that an object of huge size or quantity is being compared to something very small. One of the many meanings that could come from this statement is its hard to see the big picture of something while only looking at one small detail. This is only one meaning suggested through this powerful line.
Every line in Blakes poem is a metaphor that is filled with suggestion and deep meaning. “Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour” (3) is another metaphor Blake uses to baffle the mind. Infinity is “An unbound space, time, or quantity while eternity is “time without beginning or end” (On Line Dictionary). It is difficult for the mind to fathom these words when looked at alone, but in the context of the poem it is even more difficult to understand how one could fit such a mass into a hand or an hour. On the literal level the mind says it is impossible to comprehend so one must look to the figurative meaning to comprehend what is being said. One of the many meanings of this line is the same as the first; it is hard to see the big picture while only looking at one small detail.
Blakes word choice also helps the meaning of the poem. If Blake were to use similes rather than metaphors the work would take on different meaning. If the line “and eternity into an hour” (4) were changed to eternity is like an hour the work would
take on a more limited meaning. When like is put into the line, eternity and hour become directly related where as in the first line eternity is trying to be fit into an hour. A similar effect would occur if the line “heaven in a wild flower” (2) were changed to heaven is like a wild flower. Heaven would be compared directly