See, no longer blinded with his eyes,
[Footnote: See Rupert Brooke, Not With Vain Tears.]
and may thus conceive of the master-poet as necessarily blind. Milton's noble lines on blindness in Samson Agonistes have had much to do, undoubtedly, with the conceptions of later poets. Though blindness is seldom extended to other than actual poets, within the confines of verse having such a poet as subject it is referred to, often, as a partial explanation of genius. Thus Gray says of Milton,
The living throne, the sapphire blaze
Where angels tremble while they gaze
He saw, but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night,
[Footnote: Progress of Poesy.]
and most other poems on Milton follow this fancy.[Footnote: See John Hughes, To the Memory of Milton; William Lisle Bowles, Milton in Age; Bulwer Lytton, Milton; W. H. Burleigh, The Lesson; R. C. Robbins, Milton.] There is a good deal of verse on P. B. Marston, also, concurring with Rossetti's assertion that we may
By the darkness of thine eyes discern
How piercing was the light within thy soul.
[Footnote: See Rossetti, P. B. Marston; Swinburne,
Transfiguration, Marston, Light; Watts-Dunton, A Grave by the
Sea.]
Then, pre-eminently, verse on Homer is characterized by such an assertion as that of Keats,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen.
[Footnote: See Keats, Sonnet on Homer, Landor, Homer, Laertes,
Agatha; Joyce Kilmer, The Proud Poet, Vision.]
Though the conception is not found extensively in other types of verse, one finds an admirer apostrophizing Wordsworth,
Thou that, when first my quickened ear
Thy deeper harmonies might hear,
I imaged to myself as old and blind,
For so were Milton and Maeonides,
[Footnote: Wm. W. Lord, Wordsworth (1845).]
and at least one American writer, Richard Gilder, ascribes blindness to his imaginary artists.[Footnote: See The Blind Poet, and Lost. See also Francis Carlin Blind O'Cahan (1918.)]