 | Poems and Transcripts |  |
47
A BLIND BEGGAR.
Hard is the fate of the blind, the blind that are rich and are read to:What of the fate of the poor, plunged in a night without end?
Woe to the blind without friends, or whose friends are illiterate rustics!
Blindness for them is a grave, worse than the grave that will come.
In it the mind is enclosed, and decays, in its dark isolation,
Slowly, as years pass away, bringing nor help nor relief.
Now I will draw you a picture, and almost still life I may call it:
Merely a beggar who sits near to the door of a church;
There in the morning they place him, and thence in the evening they take him,
Nought does he hear but the steps, hastening by in the streets;
Early 'tis yet in the morning; he leans on the base of a pillar;
Turned to the sky is his face; open his eyes that are dead.
Scarce has he reached middle age; and he bears that expression of patience,
Which to the features of man blindness alone can impart.
Yes, it is early as yet, the children to school are proceeding;
Some, as the beggar they pass, twitch at his hair or his beard.
Slowly the hours pass by; and only at intervals lengthy
Slightly his body he shifts, easing his stiffening limbs.
What doth the mind in its prison, as slowly the sun in the heavens
Rises and reaches the noon, shedding no light for this man?
48
When of the banquet of life still he could humbly partake?
Or on the days of suspense, when fast he was losing his eyesight,
Ere he had sunk into calm, ere resignation had come?
Hard did he struggle and fight, to see through the film that was thick'ning
Cruelly, day by day, closing him in by degrees;
Straining with sickening heart to give to the vapoury outlines,
Shapes more precise and exact; vaguer and vaguer they grew.
All things to shadows had turned, and the shadows grew fainter and fainter,
Till in the gloom they were lost,—twilight had passed into night.
Poor ill-fated mechanic! Think'st thou that thou art the first one
Who against Nature has fought, when she retakes what she gave?
Low is the sun in its course, and long are already the shadows,
Still he is there and unchanged, turned is his face to the sky;
Less a man does he seem, than a plant of a form that is human,
Asking no friendship or care, needing no converse on earth;
Almost he seems to be dead; but once or twice, when a copper
Into his hand has been dropt, low has he murmured his thanks.
Cold is the breeze of the evening; his face and his fingers are whiter;
No other change does he show, since he was placed there at morn.
Now it is twilight at last; the children from school are returning;
Some, as the beggar they pass, pull him again by the hair;
Many the steps that he hears, and quick do they fall on the pavement:
All are in haste to get home, after the work of the day.
Few cast a glance as they hasten; but some as they pass by this beggar,
Seeing him motionless still, wish they could think that he sleeps.
| Poems and Transcripts | |