Act 5 — AUDUBON’S BLINDNESS.

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BY PARK BENJAMIN.

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John James Audubon, the great American naturalist, has

entirely lost his sight. Newspaper Paragraph.

Blind—blind! yes, blind—those eyes that loved to look

On the bright pictures in great Nature’s book.

Quenched is that visual glory which arrayed

All the winged habitants of grove and glade,

And hill and prairie, in a garb as fair

As their own plumage stirred by golden air.

Alas! no more can he behold the beam

Of morning touch the meadow or the stream;

No more the noontide’s rays pervade the scene,

Nor evening’s shadows softly intervene,

But on his sense funereal Night lets fall

The moveless folds of her impervious pall.

But he shall wake! and in a grander clime,

With vales more lovely, mountains more sublime,

There shall he view, without a film to hide,

Delicious pastures, streams that softly glide,

Groves clothed in living greenness, filled with plumes

Bright as the dawn, and various as the blooms

With which the early Summer decks his bowers—

Gems all in motion, life-invested flowers.

Fairer than those, albeit surpassing fair,

His pencil painted with a skill so rare

That they, whose feet have never trod the far

And wondrous places where such creatures are,

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—

But which Eternity must banish soon,

With beams more lustrous than the blaze of noon;

Yet softer than the evening is or morn,

When he to light immortal shall be born;

And with a vision purified behold

More than the prophets, priests and bards have told.