An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.”
An exceeding bitter cry this crying for the light sometimes is, in such as those, for instance, whom Robertson of Brighton describes as “turning from side to side,” feeling with horror the old, and all they hold dear, crumbling away—the ancient light going out—more than half suspecting the falsehood of the rest, and with an earnestness amounting to agony, leaving their home, like the Magians, and inquiring for fresh light.
Turning from side to side, with the wailing note of interrogation, “Who will show us any good?” And then, more earnestly than ever, “Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us.” In vain we turn from side to side. To whom should we go but unto Thee? Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; show the light of Thy countenance, and we shall be saved.
Observable for special application is what Locke makes observable as a general fact, that new-born children always turn their eyes to that part whence the light comes, lay them how you please.
When the blind are operated on for the restoration of sight, it is suggestively remarked by an eminent author, that the same succouring hand which has opened to them the visible world, immediately shuts out the bright prospect again for a time, a bandage being passed over the eyes, lest in the first tenderness of their recovered sense, they should be fatally affected by the sudden transition from darkness to light. But, as he goes on to say, between the awful blank of total privation of vision, and the temporary blank of vision merely veiled, there lies the widest difference. “In the moment of their restoration the blind have but one glimpse of light, flashing on them in an overpowering gleam of brightness, which the thickest, closest veiling cannot extinguish. The new darkness is not like the void darkness of old: it is filled with rapid, changing visions of brilliant colours and ever-varying forms, rising, falling, whirling hither and thither with every second.” And thus is it made evident that even when the handkerchief is passed over them, the once sightless eyes, though bandaged fast, are yet not blinded as they were before. All the more, however, they now dread the blankness of that total eclipse, now that, as it were, to them that walked in the shadow of death, light is sprung up. Light, how much the more precious for that background of blackness of darkness, darkness that still may be felt!
Light that may be felt, is the theme of blind old Œdipus, in Sophocles, at the hour of his mysterious departure—the hour and the power of darkness. Farewell he bids to—
“Light, sweet Light!
Rayless to me—mine once, and even now