A Grain of Sand

My reading of "A Grain of Sand," by Robert W. Service (1874-1958). You can find the text of the poem here:

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/15156-Robert-W-Service-A-Grain-Of-Sand/

Robert Service was not the first poet to express the idea that larger mysteries might be unlocked in a grain of sand, if we had the eyes to see and the brain to comprehend. Here is what William Blake (1757-1827) had to say about it in "Auguries Of Innocence:"

"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."

It's a reductionist sentiment, the same sentiment that underlies much of science: if you can understand a thing from what it is made of, and in turn understand what *that* is made of, and so on, you can grasp the fundamental truths of the universe. Reductionism leads us from whirling galaxies all the way down to the tiny scales of quantum physics.

The space photographs were all created with the Hubble Space Telescope and are in the public domain, courtesy of NASA.

The first beach photograph is the work of Francois Schnell, "Dune and Blue Sky," in the public domain. The second beach photograph is the work of kendiala, "Dune," licensed under the Creative Commons. The final beach photograph is by zenmasterlauren, "Child on the Beach," in the public domain. You can find these photographs by searching on each artist's name at http://www.flickr.com/.

Music is by Mooma, "Entropy," from his album "Herd Forming," licensed under the Creative Commons and available from http://www.mp3.com/.

I don't normally present poetry this short, but I was learning some new software. Consider this video the result of testing.

Enjoy.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Robert
• Service
• poetry
• poem
• sand
• beach
• Hubble
• Telescope
• astronomy

[waxcoatedbanjo]

very interesting. Do you play bass guitar? I need one for my band

[Urgelt]

Er, I'm afraid not.

Odd question to put on a poetry video.

[Yeh67]

That was awsome Urgelt. It was so realixing I nearly fell asleep.

Well done!

[metalgear8871]

Urgelt! Still love this video, even after nearly 2 years since i discovered it.

[optimus110022]

@onetorise obvious troll is obvious

[SOyouTHINKurFUNNY]

there are more stars than grain of sand on earth -_- wow

[rainbowdoom]

I miss you Urgelt!

[zemanmary]

I do hope you had more fun with that than it sounded as if you were having. I've listened tonight to your readings of several Service rhymes and enjoyed them greatly; thank you for giving them to us.

Mary Zeman

[Urgelt]

Credits are in the text box. But you have to click the box open to read them.

[chuckiesinlove]

Am I

at the

mercy?

If I am, then mercy be kind.

I try my best

but

sometimes

it eludes me...

Is this what it is to be human?

[JinzouTamashii]

...

[Urgelt]

What an intriguing question!

I don't know, either. But I will observe that though mathematics is indeed the language of nature, it does not follow that all mathematics is part of the natural language. In fact, it's pretty clear that some mathematics has nothing whatsoever to do with nature.

The trick is knowing which is which, and for that, we must experiment and examine evidence.

Science accepts no hypothesis which cannot be tested. Keep that in mind as you peruse Gödel 's ideas.

[adelma01]

Kurt Gödel showed us that falsifications can be modeled mathematically. In other words, that a statement delcaring a falsehood is possible such that is only true when it is false and false when it is true.

I think people are still dealing with the ramifications of that revelation...that maybe a unified theory of the universe is impossible because it must entail contradictions.

Maybe it means that mystery is intrinsic? Or that the universe ultimately doesn't make sense? I'm not sure....