Keller's Optimism (found poetry)

The following was written by Helen Adams Keller and is really just a preamble to a greater body of writing that she had entitled "Optimism"; If you find that you've enjoyed reading the following, then it would behoove you to read the entire work.

~ Mustafa Demiri

Optimism.

Certainly most of us regard

happiness as the proper end

of all earthly enterprise.

Many look for it in the hoarding of riches,

some in the pride of power,

and others in the achievements of art and literature;

a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds,

or in search for knowledge.

I, who cannot hear or see,

have every reason to sit in a corner,

with folded hands and weep.

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,

if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,

so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life,

—if, in short, I am an optimist,

My testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.

Once I knew the depth where no hope was,

and darkness lay on the face of all things.

Then love came and set my soul free.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness.

Now I know hope and joy.

Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in.

Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven.

My life was without past or future;

“Death,” the pessimist would say,

"a consummation devoutly to be wished."

But a little word from the fingers of another

fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness,

and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

Night fled before the day of thought,

and love and joy and hope came up

in a passion of obedience to knowledge.

Can anyone who escaped such captivity,

who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom,

Ever be a pessimist?

                                                     ~ Helen Adams Keller