The Poetry Woodland Series: "A Grain Of Sand"

Public domain poetry readings & analysis. Vol. 2 | Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's poems 🪶

A Grain Of Sand*

by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Do you see this grain of sand
Lying loosely in my hand?
Do you know to me it brought
Just a simple loving thought?
When one gazes night by night
On the glorious stars of light,
Oh how little seems the span
Measured round the life of man.

Oh! how fleeting are his years
With their smiles and their tears;
Can it be that God does care
For such atoms as we are?
Then outspake this grain of sand
"I was fashioned by His hand
In the star lit realms of space
I was made to have a place.

"Should the ocean flood the world,
Were its mountains 'gainst me hurled
All the force they could employ
Wouldn't a single grain destroy;
And if I, a thing so light,
Have a place within His sight;
You are linked unto his throne
Cannot live nor die alone.

In the everlasting arms
Mid life's dangers and alarms
Let calm trust your spirit fill;
Know He's God, and then be still."
Trustingly I raised my head
Hearing what the atom said;
Knowing man is greater far
Than the brightest sun or star.

*This poem is in the public domain!

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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 - February 22, 1911) was a poet, journalist, teacher, activist, and fiction writer born free in Baltimore. Frequently thought of as the mother of Black journalism in the US, she wrote for many anti-slavery and abolitionist newspapers and published several books and collections. This blurb hardly scratches the surface, so please read more about her incredible work and life here and here.

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This poem might be an all-time favourite!

I’ve long been fascinated by sand. Each grain is small, light, and seemingly dainty, but this enables its strength; its inability to be destroyed. There is muscle in singleness, yet, consider how many grains of sand (across different types of sand) there are in the world, each composed of everything that came before them. Sand reminds me of tethering as a birthright: the power in mobilization—being and behaving as one (I also think of it’s sister, stardust). If you’re at all interested in sand, I highly recommend this talk, Poetics, Politics, and Paradoxes of Sand, with Nehal El-Hadi. It’s beyond incredible.

To dig a little deeper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s poem astonishingly and simultaneously touches on the tenderness of insignificance and the potential of the spiritual fashioning of it (by a higher being or entity). This makes me think of the purpose of joy, as well, particularly this interview with Ross Gay, On the Insistence of Joy. Are there as many instances of joy and delight as there are grains of sand? As simple as a grain of sand? I believe so, because a grain of sand isn’t simple.

Finally, I’m reminded of Anagha Smrithi’s poem from the road. This line won’t leave my heart: “How I long to peel back the sky and find the light beneath; the one that pours through the pinpricks of the dark.”

Pinpricks as openings for grains of sand; for worlds. For the flow of all that we may never grasp (though we try), ceaselessly reaching out to us anyway…