The Blind Man

A blind man, on the thoroughfare, Startle-eyed as an owl by day, Piping a dismal little air, Taps here and there, loses his way, Tootles awry his time-old ditty Undauntedly, as by his side Lopes his dog, guides him through the city, Specter diurnal, sleepy-eyed. Days, stark, wash over him, unlit; He hears the dark world’s constant din And all that life unseen, as it Rolls, rushing, like a flood walled in! God knows what black chimeras haunt That brain opaque, what lot befalls; And what dire spells the mind is wont To scribble on those death-vault walls! Like prisoner grown half-mad, who, pent, Rots beneath Venice in her jail Eternal, and whose hours are spent Scratching a message with a nail... But when the torch, in tomb immured, Dies in the breath of death, maybe The soul, to shades’ gloom long inured, Will see with deathly clarity!