THOUGHT FOR TODAY

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller

How true! Take for example poetry. Listen to what Arthur Gutterman says:

A poem should should be as our best ever are

Golden of heart like a rose or a star.

A poem should be like the brook that you hear

Sing down the mountainside, lovely and clear.

Yet in its music, a poem should hold

That which is felt, but may never be told.

.

The essence of a poem is not the beautiful structure with its striking rhyme and rhythm, its elaborate figures of speech; even its music. They are the ephemeral dress that clothe that which you cannot see but only feel; that aspect which is ineffable. This goes for a person also. We can see the outward comeliness, that part of the personality which perishes with time and which attracts most people, but the true beauty of one is the imperishable bliss that exudes from within and which lightens up the outside.

Helen Keller was both blind and deaf from early childhood. Her life was a miracle, and her miracle worker was her teacher, Miss Sullivan who has shown much patience, love, devotion and sacrifice, intangible virtues, to make Helen what she became - a Humanitarian, a scholar, a poet and a believer. What a lesson to those who are possessed of all their senses and fail to achieve.

.

Randall Butisingh

---

The photograph below, was shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan’s hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

.