| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | VI. Hugh Stuart Boyd: His Blindness | | By Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) |
| | | GOD would not let the spheric lights accost | |
| This God-loved man, and bade the earth stand off | |
| With all her beckoning hills, whose golden stuff | |
| Under the feet of the royal sun is crossed. | |
| Yet such things were, to him, not wholly lost,— | 5 |
| Permitted, with his wandering eyes, light-proof, | |
| To have fair visions rendered full enough | |
| By many a ministrant accomplished ghost; | |
| And seeing, to sounds of softly-turned book-leaves, | |
| Sappho’s crown-rose, and Meleager’s spring, | 10 |
| And Gregory’s starlight, on Greek-burnished eves: | |
| Till Sensual and Unsensual seemed one thing | |
| Viewed from one level,—earth’s reapers at the sheaves, | |
| Not plainer than Heaven’s angels marshalling! | | | | |
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