THE BLIND LAMA
At earliest sunlight,
Ocean and City glitter’d broadly bright!
With ringing song the lark,
The sky with radiant blue,
The air with shining, and
The grass with dancing dew,
Rejoiced at the defeating of the dark,—
Till, listening, looking, with rejoicing too,
“Light! Light!” I eried, “What dearer gift than you?”
———Straightway, on the spread page
Of Hedin’s brave and morning-hearted book
The finger of a sunbeam bade me look,
And read how strange a story!
Of a Thibetan sage,
Who steadfastly the light of day abjured,
And dwelt from youth to age
In dark immured,
Striving to see the super-sensual Glory.
Through sixty-and-nine years he so endured,
Then, life’s last measure being all but run,
Ask’d to be once more brought into the sun,
And to it show’d his eyes grown wholly blind—
So well the dreadful discipline was done!
Sixty-nine years of voluntary night?
O dire delusion! senseless sacrifice!
Back to the lovely, reassuring light
27
