Today’s Poem: On His Blindness

John Milton’s parable of the one talent

John Milton Dictating to His Daughters, EugèneDelacroix (Wikimedia Commons)

By 1652, in the midst of an active career as the English Protectorate’s Secretary for Foreign Tongues — a job requiring him to function as, simultaneously, translator, censor, and government propagandist — John Milton (1608–1674) was completely blind. His colleague, the poet Andr…