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In his sonnet “On His Blindness” Milton laments the loss that impedes “that one talent which is death to hide,” now “lodged with me, useless, though my soul more bent to serve therewith my Maker.” God gave him, Milton reasons, not only a talent for words, but an urge to use them that seemed to him as essential as a heartbeat. And yet that same God had allowed blindness to stay his writing hand and make him haplessly dependent on the half-willing help of slow and uncertain daughters.