I met a friend beside the sea --
We walked together, I and he,
Gazing on the sights so fair
As salty wind blew through our hair.
I pointed out a deep green swell
That left behind a purple shell
All lined inside with pearly sheen,
A palace for a mollusk queen.
I spoke of colors in the spray,
A dancing rainbow in a ray
Of golden sunlight on the strand
Of glistening mirrors in silver sand,
Reflecting sky of azure bright
And drifting clouds of dazzling white
Which cast soft shade on inland trees,
Their verdant tips brushed by the breeze.
A blue-gray gull alighted nigh
With crimson feet and amber eye,
And in the log on which he stood
Were patterns all through auburn wood.
I turned to see my friend's delight
To share with me this glorious sight,
Yet in his face was scarce a sign
That his joy was the match of mine.
Unmoved was he while I admired --
"Can you not see it?" I inquired.
Then crept o'er me the startling truth:
He'd known no color from his youth.
Purple, crimson, golden, green:
Only words he'd never seen.
Even that his eyes were blue
He knew not, nor beheld the hue
Of his own skin -- I pitied him!
To live a life so dull and dim
As not to know the captured eye
By an arc of light-art in the sky.
In silence we turned back again --
My heart was filled with sadness when
I thought how, though we both perceived
The same world, only one received
The fullness of the beauty there.
O! privilege beyond compare
To see the world for all it is --
What tragedy a world like his.
And yet what tragedy, thought I,
Too often, heedless, I pass by
The splendor of simplicity
Which should invoke felicity.
Can we with opened eyes and mind
Look down upon the colorblind
When we ourselves were once as they,
Walking in worlds of only gray?
Look once more on golden light
And see your colored world aright,
Nor cease to wonder, nor expect
The world to know what you forget.