A blind man's offering.

  • Bowen, B. B. (Benjamin B.), 1819-1905
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A blind man's offering. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    379/448 (page 369)
    She leads by no false, wandering glare, No voice ambiguous strikes your ear, To bid you vainly stray.” We intimated, at the commencement of this article, that the highest kind of poetry, — that which approxi- mates nearest to painting, descriptive poetry,—was that in which a person born blind would be least likely to excel. Dr. Blacklock made several very successful attempts to delineate external nature, and to describe those objects around him, and the varied phenomena which the material world presents, but of which he conld know nothing, excepting that which he obtained from the necessarily very imperfect descriptions of others; yet, nevertheless, in many of his pictures he was surprisingly true and exact. We have before us an English copy of the third edition of his works. One of the best poems it contains is his hymn to the Supreme Being. In the following extract, in which he represents the dawn of creation, there is something truly sublime. As we read it we cannot help feeling a deep regret that the writer should never have seen. “Arise, my soul! on wings seraphic rise, And praise th’ Almighty Sovereign of the skies ; In whom alone essential glory shines, Which not the heaven of heavens, nor boundless space confines. When darkness ruled with universal sway, He spoke, and kindled up the blaze of day ; First, fairest offspring of the omnific word! Which like a garment clothed its Sovereign Lord. On liquid air he bade the columns rise That prop the starry concave of the skies ; Diffused the blue expanse from pole to pole, And spread circumfluent ether round the whole. Soon as he bids impetuous tempests fly, To wing his sounding chariot through the sky, Impetuous tempests the command obey, Sustain his flight, and sweep the aerial way.