Hard light bathed them-a whole nation of eyeless men, <br />Dark bipeds not aware how they were maimed. A long <br />Process, clearly, a slow curse, <br />Drained through centuries, left them thus. <br /> <br />At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few, <br />No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date, <br />Normal type had achieved snug <br />Darkness, safe from the guns of heavn; <br /> <br />Whose blind mouths would abuse words that belonged to their <br />Great-grandsires, unabashed, talking of light in some <br />Eunuch'd, etiolated, <br />Fungoid sense, as a symbol of <br /> <br />Abstract thoughts. If a man, one that had eyes, a poor <br />Misfit, spoke of the grey dawn or the stars or green- <br />Sloped sea waves, or admired how <br />Warm tints change in a lady's cheek, <br /> <br />None complained he had used words from an alien tongue, <br />None question'd. It was worse. All would agree 'Of course,' <br />Came their answer. "We've all felt <br />Just like that." They were wrong. And he <br /> <br /> <br />Knew too much to be clear, could not explain. The words -- <br />Sold, raped flung to the dogs -- now could avail no more; <br />Hence silence. But the mouldwarps, <br />With glib confidence, easily <br /> <br />Showed how tricks of the phrase, sheer metaphors could set <br />Fools concocting a myth, taking the worlds for things. <br />Do you think this a far-fetched <br />Picture? Go then about among <br /> <br />Men now famous; attempt speech on the truths that once, <br />Opaque, carved in divine forms, irremovable, <br />Dear but dear as a mountain- <br />Mass, stood plain to the inward eye.<br /><br />Clive Staples Lewis<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-country-of-the-blind-2/
