Poems Sigourney 1834/Meeting of the Blind with the Deaf, Dumb and Blind
MEETING OF THE BLIND WITH THE DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND.
On the meeting of the blind pupils from the Institution at Boston, with the deaf and dumb, and the deaf, dumb and blind, at the Asylum in Hartford.
A mingled group, from distant homes,
In youth and health and hope are here,
But yet some latent evil seems
To mark their lot with frown severe,
And one there is, upon whose soul
Affliction's thrice-wreathed chain is laid,
Mute stranger, 'mid a world of sound,
And locked in midnight's deepest shade.
And 'mid that group her curious hand
O'er brow and tress intently stray,
Hath sympathy her heart-strings wrung,
That sadly thus she turns away?
Her mystic thoughts we may not tell,
For inaccessible and lone,
No eye explores their hermit-cell,
Save that which lights the Eternal Throne
But they of silent lip rejoiced
In bright Creation's boundless store,
In sun and moon and peopled shade,
And flowers that gem earth's verdant floor;
In fond affection's speaking smile,
In graceful motions waving line,
And all those charms that beauty sheds
O'er human form and face divine.
While they, to whom the orb of day
Is quenched in "ever-during dark,"
Adored that intellectual ray
Which writes the Sun a glow-worm spark,
And in that blest communion joyed
Which thought to thought doth deftly bind,
And bid the tireless tongue exchange
The never-wasted wealth of mind.
And closer to their souls they bound
The bliss of Music's raptured thrill,
That "linked melody" of sound
That gives to man a seraph's skill,
So they on whose young brows had turned,
The warmth of Pity's tearful gaze,
Each in his broken censer burned
The incense of exulting praise.
Yes, they whom kind Compassion deemed
Scantly with Nature's gifts endued,
Poured freshest from their bosom's fount
The gushing tide of gratitude,
And with that tide a moral flowed,
A deep reproof to those who share
Of sight, and sound, and speech the bliss,
Yet coldly thank the Giver's care.