Thus Gray says of Milton,
The living throne, the sapphire blaze
Where angels tremble while they gaze
He saw, but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night,
[Footnote: _Progress of Poesy_.]
and most other poems on Milton follow this fancy.[Footnote: See John
Hughes, _To the Memory of Milton_; William Lisle Bowles, _Milton in
Age_; Bulwer Lytton, _Milton_; W. H. Burleigh, _The Lesson_; R. C.
Robbins, _Milton_.] There is a good deal of verse on P. B. Marston,
also, concurring with Rossetti's assertion that we may
By the darkness of thine eyes discern
How piercing was the light within thy soul.
[Footnote: See Rossetti, _P. B. Marston_; Swinburne,
_Transfiguration, Marston, Light_; Watts-Dunton, _A Grave by the
Sea_.]
Then, pre-eminently, verse on Homer is characterized by such an
assertion as that of Keats,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen.
[Footnote: See Keats, _Sonnet on Homer_, Landor, _Homer, Laertes,
Agatha_; Joyce Kilmer, _The Proud Poet, Vision_.]
Though the conception is not found extensively in other types of verse,
one finds an admirer apostrophizing Wordsworth,
Thou that, when first my quickened ear
Thy deeper harmonies might hear,
I imaged to myself as old and blind,
For so were Milton and Maeonides,
[Footnote: Wm.
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