The Sunday Haul (on 06-08-2017)

For the past four continuous weeks it hasn’t rained on Sunday and last Sunday too was no exception. It was sunny and bright last Sunday too and I was a bit confused whether to be happy or be worried. If it hasn’t rained for so long there will be a lot of problems in the countryside, and on the other hand if it doesn’t rain I won’t have any problem at Abids. I hoped it would rain soon and set out for Abids to look for good titles to pick from the thousands of books laid out on the pavements. After a long time I had just one title in the haul and I was pleased with what I found.

Ages ago I came across William Blake’s ‘The Auguries of Innocence’ by William Blake and was spell bound by the four lines I read. I thought the entire poem had only these four lines:

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

But I was surprised to know that ‘The Auguries of Innocence’ is a long poem with 132 lines. Before writing this post about the book on William Blake that I found at Abids last Sunday I thought I’d check out the poem online. All these years I had the stupid idea that it was a four line poem. How wrong I was, and how dumb of me not to have tried to read the rest of the poem. However, it was only those four lines that I came across somewhere and it is not my fault that I was unaware of the rest of the lines. Anyway, the only book I found at Abids and that too at the fag end of the hunt was a copy of ‘William Blake’ by Arthur Symons. It was a textbook, something I keep away from but since it was on a poet I like I bought it. Looking at it I thought it must have been published abroad. I was quite surprised to see on the back cover that it was published in Kolkata. I got it for fifty rupees.