Mrs. Sigourney of Hartford: Poems and Prose on the Early American Deaf Community

“Meeting of the Blind with the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” (1834)

136 Part 3 [6] For still the undying soul may teach Without a glance, a tone, a sigh, And well canst thou its mirrored speech Interpret to the wondering eye. [7] What though her locked and guarded mind Doth foil philosophy divine, Till even reason fails to find A clue to that untravelled shrine. [8] Yet may thine art with victor sway Win laurels from this desert wild, And to a future age portray Mysterious Nature’s hermit child. “Meeting of the Blind with the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” (1834) This poem first appeared in Sigourney’s 1834 Poems, so if it describes an actual event, as it seems to, it must have been occasioned by Howe’s first visit to Hartford to meet Brace in that same year. If so, Howe must have been accompanied on that visit by a group of his pupils, not including Laura Bridgman, of course, whom he was not to meet until 1837. This poem is one of Sigourney’s most positive in terms of attitudes toward deaf and blind children. Although she hints at “some latent evil,” she begins by remarking on their “youth and health and hope.” In the second stanza, which describes Julia Brace, Sigourney again remarks on her inscrutability but asks, rhetorically, whether her action of turning away might not be caused by her sympathy for the blind children! We then see both the deaf children, in stanza 3, and the blind children, in stanzas 4 and 5, rejoicing in what the senses they have, the deaf to enjoy “bright Creation’s boundless store” and the blind to enjoy both music and the intellect, which shines so bright it makes the very sun look like the flicker of a glow-worm. Though Sigourney Main Pgs 1-162.indd 136 4/4/2013 12:35:33 PM The Deaf-Blind Girls 137 Pity had gazed in sorrow on these children so “scantly” endowed with “Nature’s gifts,” the children themselves are exulting in praise of their Maker, for whom they feel only gratitude. Nicely said. Sigourney ends on a preacherly note with a little dig at the hearing and sighted whose thanks for the “giver’s care” is “cold” in comparison. The text is from the 1834 Poems. A British editor, Jane Margaret Strickland, included it under a different title, “The Hapless Ones,” in her 1838 Sacred Minstrelsy, or Poetry for the Devout, where the deafblind subject is mistakenly identified in a footnote as “Julia Price.” Sigourney used this poem a second time in The Western Home (1854). • Meeting of the Blind with the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind 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. [1] A mingled 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. [2] 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. Sigourney Main Pgs 1-162.indd 137 4/4/2013 12:35:33 PM 138 Part 3 [3] 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, And all those charms that beauty sheds O’er human form and face divine. [4] While they, to whom the orb of day Is quenched in “ever-during dark,” Adored the intellectual ray Which writes the Sun a glow-worm spark, And in that blest communion joyed Which thought to thought doth deftly bind, and bid the tireless tongue exchange The never-wasted wealth of mind. [5] And closer to their souls they bound The bliss of Music’s raptured thrill, That “linked melody” of sound That gives to man a seraph’s skill, So they on whose young brows had turned, The warmth of Pity’s tearful gaze, Each...