In 2011 I was reading a biography of John Keats. In the introduction Lord Byron is quoted as saying that Keats “belonged to that second-hand school of poetry” because he got his inspiration from poetry and art, not from life. Be that as it may (and Byron was wrong if he meant that none of Keats’ poetry ever arose from his experience of life), I think we now know which poet is considered the greater one, the rough and bed tumble Byron or the poetic Keats.
Before you read the sonnet below, please go to
https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2011-photomicrography-competition/sand
first and see the image of grains of sand taken through a “light” microscope. If you access this photo on a smartphone instead of a larger computer, you might not be able to see the photograph well enough.
I’ll also paste it in here, just in case.
Poets Are the Legislators
of the Scientific World
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.
~ William Blake
If only Blake could live in times like these
When microscopes reveal the range of sand’s
Unlimited bright shapes and filigrees
Of lovely, colored surfaces. The hands
Of poets now can write about the near
Infinity of grains of sand as fact;
Yes, not about some mystic dream, but here
And now. Reality does not detract
From wonder. Now the scientific hour
Has settled over humans like a close
Encounter of the Third Kind, we can flower,
Peyote-like, a starburst’s truthful dose.
Great poets’ insight into mystery
Precedes technology’s slow history.