Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/198

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On the meeting of the blind pupils from the Institution at Boston, with the deaf and dumb, and the deaf, dumb and blind, at the Asylum in Hartford.

group, from distant homes, In youth and health and hope are here, But yet some latent evil seems To mark their lot with frown severe, And one there is, upon whose soul Affliction's thrice-wreathed chain is laid, Mute stranger, 'mid a world of sound, And locked in midnight's deepest shade.

And 'mid that group her curious hand O'er brow and tress intently stray, Hath sympathy her heart-strings wrung, That sadly thus she turns away? Her mystic thoughts we may not tell, For inaccessible and lone, No eye explores their hermit-cell, Save that which lights the Eternal Throne

But they of silent lip rejoiced In bright Creation's boundless store, In sun and moon and peopled shade, And flowers that gem earth's verdant floor; In fond affection's speaking smile, In graceful motions waving line,