Know all their beauty with familiar love—

From the stained oriole to the snow-white dove.

Blind—blind! Alas! he is bereft of light

Who gave such pleasure to the sense of sight.

His eyes, that, like the sun, had power to vest

All forms with color, are with darkness prest:

Sealed with a gloom chaotic like the deep;

Shut in by shadows like the realm of sleep.

Yet ’tis not meet to mourn a loss so brief—

A pain, to which time cannot yield relief—