You Tell Me I Am Blind

MY WORLD
by Lily E. G. Hendrix (1885)
graduate of the Missouri School for the Blind

You tell me I am blind, but ah!
You know not what you say;
You little know the glorious things
That I behold each day;
There is a world I call my own,
All radiant with light!
A land as different from yours
As morning is from night.

Each morn I ope my weary eyes
Upon your world of gloom,
Its chill and darkness only give
A warning of the tomb;
I linger but a moment there,
And then I turn and hie
To that fair realm all lighted up
With hope of bye and bye.

Perhaps your world is not so dark
As it has seemed to me;
Perhaps that is the reason why
You think I cannot see;
You cannot know the rays that light
This inner world of mine,
Or you would never pity me
And say that I am blind.