Thou that, when first my quickened ear
Thy deeper harmonies might hear,
I imaged to myself as old and blind,
For so were Milton and Maeonides,
[Footnote: Wm. W. Lord, _Wordsworth_ (1845).]

and at least one American writer, Richard Gilder, ascribes blindness to
his imaginary artists.[Footnote: See _The Blind Poet_, and _Lost_. See
also Francis Carlin _Blind O'Cahan_ (1918.)]

But the old, inescapable contradiction in aesthetic philosophy crops up
here. The poet is concerned only with ideal beauty, yet the way to it,
for him, must be through sensuous beauty. So, as opposed to the picture
of the singer blind to his surroundings, we have the opposite
picture--that of a singer with every sense visibly alert. At the very
beginning of a narrative and descriptive poem, the reader can generally
distinguish between the idealistic and the sensuous singer. The more
spiritually minded poet is usually characterized as blond. The natural
tendency to couple a pure complexion and immaculate thoughts is surely
aided, here, by portraits of Shelley, and of Milton in his youth. The
brunette poet, on the other hand, is perforce a member of the fleshly
school. The two types are clearly differentiated in Bulwer Lytton's
_Dispute of the Poets_. The spiritual one

Lifted the azure light of earnest eyes,

but his brother,

The one with brighter hues and darker curls