Pocahontas and Other Poems (New York)/Laura Bridgman

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LAURA BRIDGMAN,

THE DEAF, DUMB, AND BLIND GIRL, AT THE INSTITUTION FOR THE BLIND IN BOSTON.



Where is the light that to the eye
    Heaven's holy message gave,
Tinging the retina with rays
    From sky, and earth, and wave?

Where is the sound that to the soul
    Mysterious passage wrought,
And strangely made the moving lip
    A harp-string for the thought?

All fled! all lost! Not even the rose
    An odour leaves behind,
That, like a broken reed, might trace
    The tablet of the mind.

That mind! It struggles with its fate,
    The anxious conflict, see!
As if through Bastile-bars it sought
    Communion with the free.

Yet still its prison-robe it wears
    Without a prisoner's pain,
For happy childhood's beaming sun
    Glows in each bounding vein.


And bless'd Philosophy is near,
    In Christian armour bright,
To scan the subtlest clew that leads
    To intellectual light.

Say, lurks there not some ray of heaven
    Amid thy bosom's night,
Some echo from a better land,
    To make the smile so bright?

The lonely lamp in Greenland cell,
    Deep 'neath a world of snow,
Doth cheer the loving household group
    Though none beside may know;

And, sweet one, doth our Father's hand
    Place in thy casket dim
A radiant and peculiar lamp,
    To guide thy steps to Him?