Blind and Deaf

Part I

A GIRL lies quiet in a humble room
The fresh spring dawn doth tranquilly illume.
Pale but for flush of fever on her face,
Vet calm she sleeps now in that quiet place ;
Nor though the little casement stand ajar
Can the sunlight her first sweet slumber mar,
So well her rose and honeysuckle try
To soften the day for her with greenery :
Her dear rose-linnet in his osier cage
With blushing breast the season doth presage:
But poorly seems that cottage room adorned —
Rude pictures such as wealthier folks had scorned
And little figures rude of earthenware
Of boys and girls, beasts blue and white, are there
Upon the chimney-shelf: the bed is mean
With a patched coverlid of varied sheen.
A mother works and watches by her side,
'Tis now the crisis of the turning tide :
Say, shall it whelm the silent sufierer
Or at her very lips ebb down from her?
Profound that slumber, but she wakes at last;
She does not move, the lurid visions past ;
For now she tastes the bliss of painlessness,
Too weak to stir or think, yet feels no less
" Sweet life is mine, not death ; now I shall live."
And soon creep thoughts like creatures that revive
From winter's frost — " I thank my Father,
God,
For I was young to lie beneath the sod ;
I would not leave dear Mother and the weans —
Do not sweet scents come through my leafy screens ?
Is not the young year glad with budding greens?"
Now would she turn and look if one be near
Her heart yearns after, but she scarce may
Yet the quick ear that listens by the child
Has caught the rustle, and with bounding wild
The mother's heart leaps up : she leans above,
Love in her eyes to light her weary dove
Home from the waste whose bound no wanderer knows.
Finger on mouth, with motion to repose —
Yet the maid pays no heed as if distraught,
But thus meanders her untrammelled thought :
" I do not hear the children on the stairs
With softened voices as they play at bears ;
Yet little Tom and .May disturbed me not.
They knew that I was ill — mayl:)e remote
P'rom now the time when I was taken first.
And yet — 'tis strange — I do not hear as erst
The measured clicking of the old Dutch clock
Upon whose face the ship was wont to rock ;
'Tis very dark ; hardly I fathom it ;
Am I alone ? or would poor Mother sit
Without a fire or candle ? " Then she grows
Bewildered rather, till the fond face glows
Near and more near, until it feels her brow ;
This makes her gentle spirit overflow
With limpid joy ; returning kisses faint —
"You have been ever by me. Mother, saint ! "
She murmurs. " Once more in the dear sunshine
With you I shall go wandering, mother mine !
But light a candle, darling, it is dark !
On moonless nights there always came some spark
Of starlight through the honeysuckle's trail ;
You had a fire when I began to fail.
When I remember last." "Hush! dearest child
You must not talk now," prays the mother mild ;
" But O my God ! " she utters in her heart,
"Now the spring sun she longs for doth impart
His glory to us all — does she awake
Ne'er to behold him more ? Thou wilt forsake
Not her, O Father, whom Thou dost awake
To life within my arms ! " "A light, I pray ! "
The child cries anxious, now athirst for day.
Then falls a large hot tear upon the cheek
Of her forlorn, a tear the mother weak
May not restrain : but all remaining still,
No light, no answer, dire forebodings fill
Her fainting heart with sudden hands and chill :
" Speak, my own Mother, answer me," she pressed ;
So now the mother knows that she had guessed
The bitter truth, the whole ; she stoops and winds
Her arms about the child, who troubled finds
The cheek she best loves wet against her own.
She weeps too, but the little heart has flown
Where it was always wont distressed to fly.
Far as it seems unto the world, yet nigh
To a child's heart, that inner sanctuary —
"And would I face even death, how willingly ! "
She whispered, " Father, so to be with Thee !
And shall I not be with Thee even now ? "
Then quietly with pale unruffled brow
She turns upon the pillow, and she speaks
With a sweet patience, only with the breaks
Of now and then a sob " My mother press
Me to your side if truly I shall guess :
Am I not deaf.? " Into her breast she draws.
Then the child falters, after but a pause,
" And, Mother, press me if I should be blind ! "
As of love's agony she feels the bind
Of those fond arms anew — and while she drifts
Far from the old blest earth, whose glory shifts
From eye to ear, from raptured ear to eye,
That she has loved with what intensity !
She knows that two new fibres strong as death
From now her spirit to her mother's wreathe,
And while in vain her eyeball seeks the ray
Deep in her heart dawns the Eternal Day !

Part II

Slow mantled Spring till Summer overflowed
Life's goblet, ebbed to Winter ; when it glowed
Afresh, at casement meek behold her sit
Where butterfly-like breezes wanton flit ;
Her all-unspotted careful-ordered dress
Denotes of tending eyes the watchfulness ;
A book of raised type is on her knee.
But one arm on the window leaneth she.
Her head upon her hand with face full-turned
Upon the Spring, as if her spirit yearned
To that — for grand about her all the tide
Of light that lives in Heaven deep and wide
Rolls in, and bears a myriad glorious things.
And all its wealth upon the maiden flings.

For lo ! the Spring hath burst her chrysalis,
Life in her wings and rapture in her kiss :
And she hath flushed through all the dreary woods
To touch and light them to a flame of buds ;.
Her gleamy hand so brimmed with violets,
Through her strained fingers here and there she lets
Them fall to grass, where amethyst they lie
And watch her, each a sylvan spirit's eye :
Intense reflections of her rainbow fans
Start living bluebells when the light engrains,
And primroses, and stars of golden glow
Called celandine — the year hath ripened now !

Her little cottage on the border stands
Of a great wood and high — with pasture lands
Unrolled beneath, whereto a lawny slope
Inclines with many a softly rounded group
Of brake gorse-goldened or foam-sprayed with may :
Both through the fronting wood, and far away,
Her window looks ; to lustrous fields of grass
Hedge-girt, elm-dotted that the kine may pass
The midday heats there'chewing mild the cud.
With limp ear flapping tickling flies that stud ;
To blossomed orchards, fallows loamy brown,
Wheatfields and clover lessening to the town,
The town smoke-nested with its abbey grey,
On to horizons azure fused with day.

Bronze chestnut-buds, wrapped gummy as they grow,
Swelled fluffy, spilling with an overflow
All unaware of flimsy tissue green,
Little leaves crumpled, dress for fairy queen ;
So all the trees a rarest mist o'ercrept
Of verdure, and condensing daily swept
Throughout the woodland ; tints impleaching wed,
Young oak-leaves chrysoberyl tinct with red.
Glossy with oils that wait upon their birth ;
While yon fresh beech-leaves moving as in mirth
Seem lithe to lie upon the delicate air
As though too gross to let them sink it were.
Fringed with a down as silky as may mist,
When edgeways-lit, a lip that you have kissed :
Green flakes of clustered vivid light they fell
I deem upon the boughs, and oh ! how well
They're quenched with mutual shadows and relumed
Over and over ; note how gently gloomed
And chequer-lit their pale smooth-rinded bole,
Even as the lichened bark where ivy stole.

Fresh scented fern at tips brown-scaled and twirled,
Fronds folded as an infant's toes are curled.
Grows free amid the campion crimson-lake
And where stellaria graceful-leaved doth shake,
While fleshy mushrooms rayed beneath with fawn.
Growth of a night, dot thick the dewy lawn.
Dreamy the down of sallow-catkin swims
In the mild sunlight ; shall we note the whims
Of yon wee caterpillar hued like jade
On his silk subtle jewel-glimmered thread ?
But now deep hides in many a hawthorn bush
A nest of pale eggs tiny with a blush
And mottle of wine ; from lichens woven and moss,
Horsehair and bents and feathers, sheltering close
A mother chaffinch whose gay mate sits nigh
And chirps to her — yon linnet dipping by
Sings as he flies, and perching on the ash
A runnel long of melody doth flash
From him and wander through the woodland far,
Whose notes impetuous ecstatic war
Which shall be first ; they hustle and they throng
As all the teeming Spring were in the song;
That little elf will utter forth the whole ;
Well may he quiver, and beyond control
The rapture whirl him from the leafy shade
With shimmering wings adown the sunlit glade !
But he is not alone— hark ! trickling notes
From the hid blackcap, tenderly there floats
Sweet cooing of the cuckoo and the dove,
Clear pipes the blackbird, and a thrush's love
Flutes softer— hark ! the lark is in the blue
Whose music-sea the sunlight eddies through ;
With these the whitethroat, many a bird, combines,
As if to shoot and cross a myriad Hnes
Of melody entangling all the soul,
And in a web of breathless bliss to roll.

In a warm haze the brakes are rounded soft ;
A grey-green exhalation here aloft
They seem, with thinner edges luminous
Even as a cloud's : from their dusk hearts of rose
And blackberry the cinnamon nightingales
Skim into sunlight gurgling amorous tales.
Or pensive call to her who darkling glows
Over their own live secret — where — he knows !

All this and more — by so much as beside
The year teems with of flowers elfin-eyed,
And mosses fairy-branched of amber stems
All capped with fairy urns concealing gems
Of seed, a world to insects metal-sheened,
Lambs by their mothers frisking newlyyeaned —
All this and more, commingled in the tide
Ever calm undulating far and wide
Of air and light in bounteousness sublime
And all exhaustless, as in former time,
Floats now about this humble cottage maid.
Rich should she be, though in mean weeds arrayed :
Rich hath she been in flinging wide her soul
To every humblest claimant of the whole :
And rich she is, although that sea in sooth
Of glory vainly sweeps and summons both
The closed and silent portal of her eye
And of her ear, as where deserted lie
Sea-lapped palace-walls blithe once with life ;
But as in vain the ripple-lisp or strife
Of clamorous white surge would waken now
The sullen rock, so vainly woos the sun
And all Spring-voices calling to the stone
Of her dead sense whom God makes deaf and blind !
Yet is He still the Father — and refined
Intensely grow the senses that are left,
Nor is the girl of touch and smell bereft ;
So as she sits and leans out to the Spring,
She may not rush with bird-like wantoning
Into the woods as erst the child would do ;
Yet still remain of channels one or two
Through which the living glory may invade :
Does there not wander in from garden and glade
A wash of fragrance, honeysuckle scent,
Acacia or seringa myriad-blent,
Now this now that, and can she not feel cool
The downy breeze upon her forehead full ?
Then these with magic wand shall summon all
Yea all the summer in her spirit's hall ;
Exquisite vision something shadowy
Such as to Eden dreaming bards supply,
Such as to I\Iilton blind dwelt ever nigh.
Imagination that forbids the sense
Explore some sweet lane's winding, tangle dense,
Because she holds her fantasy more fair
Or dear than earth, Imagination rare
Is opening this blind girl's inner eye
To that near world whose fadeless beauties lie
Substance of ours that only bloom to die !

And once her fingers touched the raised type
Upon her knee, when lo ! her mother's lip
Pressed to her forehead — then a radiant smile
Dawned on that wan blank face, as otherwhile
I saw a grey blank rock illumine dim
Through watery skies — though vain the clamorous chime
Of surges and the flash of sea-birds, mark !
Heaven streams with pearl, deep smiles the mountain dark !
She speaks, "O mother, wonderful to read
That He who calls Himself my friend indeed
Calls me His friend. — Can then the Master need
Me as His friend ? on this my spirit feed ! "