A
Song for Simeon |
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by
T.S. Eliot in 1928 |
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Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and | ||
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills; | ||
The stubborn season has made stand. | ||
My life is light, waiting for the death wind, | ||
Like a feather on the back of my hand. | ||
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners | ||
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land. | ||
Grant us thy peace. | ||
I have walked many years in this city, | ||
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor, | ||
Have given and taken honour and ease. | ||
There went never any rejected from my door. | ||
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children's | ||
........children | ||
When the time of sorrow is come? | ||
They will take to the goat's path, and the fox's home, | ||
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords. | ||
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation | ||
Grant us thy peace. | ||
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation, | ||
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow, | ||
Now at this birth season of decease, | ||
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word, | ||
Grant Israel's consolation | ||
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow. | ||
According to thy word. | ||
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation | ||
With glory and derision, | ||
Light upon light, mounting the saints' stair. | ||
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer, | ||
Not for me the ultimate vision. | ||
Grant me thy peace. | ||
(And a sword shall pierce thy heart, | ||
Thine also). | ||
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me, | ||
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me. | ||
Let thy servant depart, | ||
Having seen thy salvation. | ||
. . |