The great guru's poem portrays the concept that each individual is a spark of the Divine, using the metaphor of tiny pieces of wood likened to sparks of Divine love.
Paramahansa Yogananda’s short 13-line poem, “The Splinters of Thy Love,” dramatizes Divine Love as “splinters” or small strips of wood lying “strewn in many a heart.” The speaker of the poem asserts that these “little fragments” come from “above” or from the higher consciousness that is one with Divinity.
Unique Rime Scheme
The poem has a unique rime scheme: ABAABCCDDEFFE. The rime scheme alone demonstrates a unique view of language, art, and consciousness. These poems of Paramahansa are not ordinary poems; they are informed and inspired by the superconsconsious state of mind, in which the great guru was ensconsed.
The other-worldly nature of this poem, as well as the other poems it accompanies in Songs of the Soul, exemplify a writer who is more than an ordinary poet, whose extraordinary poems reveal the relationship of the soul to the Oversoul or Divine.
Union of Divine and Individual
The poem insists that each individual human heart contains a part of the Divine. All the “splinters” of the Divine are spread over the globe in the hearts of each human being, whom God has created in His image, as the Christian faith professes.
The first two lines release the metaphor that likens God’s love to the tiny pieces of wood that “lie strewn” in hearts throughout the world. Then the next two lines reveal that these tiny pieces come from the Divine.
The Speaker Collects the Splinters
The speaker of the poem reveals that he gathers those “splinters” that he finds “spread here and there.” He is a guru to all those individuals whom he finds life after life, in order to lead them back to the Divine.
He is charmed by his devotees; he collects them “with care,” and he is reminded that he has seen the whole of God’s love collected into one being from the many tiny pieces of love he feels from the hearts of the many individual devotees.
The Guru Defines God
As a guru, one who leads those in darkness back into light, the speaker asserts that he has seen God’s “whole unbroken love that’s everywhere.” Therefore, he has the strong will and the intense devotion with which he can “weld [his] varied collection / Of tiny bits” of love.
And after he fuses all of those “splinters,” he makes a complete tree, and his collection “matches” that of God. He has merely connected all of the hearts into one vast sea of love. That sea of love is God.
