Laura Bridgman

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Title:     Laura Bridgman
Author: Lydia H. Sigourney [More Titles by Sigourney]

THE DEAF, DUMB, AND BLIND GIRL, AT THE INSTITUTION FOR THE BLIND, IN BOSTON

Where is the light that to the eye
Heaven's holy message gave,
Tinging the retina with rays
From sky, and earth, and wave?

Where is the sound that to the soul
Mysterious passage wrought,
And strangely made the moving lip
A harp-string for the thought?

All fled! all lost! Not even the rose[1]
An odour leaves behind,
That, like a broken reed, might trace
The tablet of the mind.

That mind! It struggles with its fate,
The anxious conflict, see!
As if through Bastile-bars it sought
Communion with the free.

Yet still its prison-robe it wears
Without a prisoner's pain;
For happy childhood's beaming sun
Glows in each bounding vein.

And bless'd Philosophy is near,
In Christian armour bright,
To scan the subtlest clew that leads
To intellectual light.

Say, lurks there not some ray of heaven
Amid thy bosom's night,
Some echo from a better land,
To make the smile so bright?

The lonely lamp in Greenland cell,
Deep 'neath a world of snow,
Doth cheer the loving household group
Though none around may know;

And, sweet one, hath our Father's hand
Plac'd in thy casket dim
Some radiant and peculiar lamp,
To guide thy steps to Him?

[Footnote 1: Laura is deprived of the sense of smell,
which in Julia's case is so acute.]

[The end]
Lydia H. Sigourney's poem: Laura Bridgman

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