Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,

Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Fancy in Nubibus.

Be to her virtues very kind;

Be to her faults a little blind.

Matthew Prior (1664-1721): An English Padlock.

By the glare of false science betray'd,

That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind.

James Beattie (1735-1803): The Hermit.

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,

And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears

And slits the thin-spun life.

John Milton (1608-1674): Lycidas. Line 70.

Buy my flowers,—oh buy, I pray!

The blind girl comes from afar.

Edward Bulwer Lytton (1805-1873): Buy my Flowers.

Calm on the listening ear of night

Come Heaven's melodious strains,

Where wild Judea stretches far

Her silver-mantled plains.

Edmund H Sears (1810-1876): Christmas Song.

He that is strucken blind cannot forget

The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act i. Sc. 1.

Happy he

With such a mother! faith in womankind

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high

Comes easy to him; and tho' he trip and fall,

He shall not blind his soul with clay.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): The Princess. Part vii. Line 308.

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

The pretty follies that themselves commit.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act ii. Sc. 6.

I have heard of reasons manifold

Why Love must needs be blind,

But this the best of all I hold,—

His eyes are in his mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind

Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind;

What the weak head with strongest bias rules,—

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Criticism. Part ii. Line 1.

Who is so deafe or so blinde as is hee

That wilfully will neither heare nor see?

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part ii. Chap. ix.

The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Bride of Abydos. Canto ii. Stanza 2.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act i. Sc. 1.