“EYELESS, IN GAZA, AT THE MILL, WITH SLAVES”
_Milton_
The wind is blind.
The earth sees sun and moon; the height
Is watch-tower to the dawn; the plain
Shines to the summer; visible light
Is scattered in the drops of rain.
The wind is blind.
The flashing billows are aware;
With open eyes the cities see;
Light leaves the ether, everywhere
Known to the homing bird and bee,
The wind is blind,
Is blind alone. How has he hurled
His ignorant lash, his aimless dart,
His eyeless rush upon the world,
Unseeing, to break his unknown heart!
The wind is blind,
And the sail traps him, and the mill
Captures him; and he cannot save
His swiftness and his desperate will
From those blind uses of the slave.
TIME’S REVERSALS
A DAUGHTER’S PARADOX
To his devoted heart[1]
Who, young, had loved his ageing mate for life,
In late lone years Time gave the elder’s part,
Time gave the bridegroom’s boast, Time gave a younger wife.
A wilder prank and plot
Time soon will promise, threaten, offering me
Impossible things that Nature suffers not—
A daughter’s riper mind, a child’s seniority.
Oh, by my filial tears
Mourned all too young, Father! On this my head
Time yet will force at last the longer years,
Claiming some strange respect for me from you, the dead.
Nay, nay! Too new to know
Time’s conjuring is, too great to understand.
Memory has not died; it leaves me so—
Leaning a fading brow on your unfaded hand.
Footnote 1:
Dr. Johnson outlived by 30 years his wife, who was 20 years his
senior.