Looking For A Poem

William Gonsalves Male, 84, United States (2/9/2013 1:42:00 AM)

Years ago, I read a poem that was written to impress the reader about the lenght of " eternity" . It was asbout a small bird (humming bird??) that took a grain of sand from the earth, then flew it to the moon (or furthest star) , dropped it off, then flew back and moved the next grain of sand, etc. Then after that, the bird flew back and forth, carrying each leaf on earth. Then the bird flew back and forth, carrying each drop of water from the oceans, lakes and rivers. Then when the bird was done with all that, the bird returned each item back to earth. All that time wouldn't represent One second, of " eternity" .

Can anyone help me with the Title or Author, so I can sleep at night??

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Laura Burns (2/10/2013 3:29:00 PM) Post reply
It is a story found in " The Shepherd Boy" by the Brothers Grimm. James Joyce uses it in the sermon scene in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In his book The Story of Mankind, Hendrik Willem van Loon tells it this way:

High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock.
It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand
years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.

When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity
will have gone by.

Looking For A Poem

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