A Song for Simeon
by
T. S. Eliot
(About the Poet & Analysis)
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 –1965) was a
poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. He is
Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, and a central figure in
English-language Modernist poetry.
He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in
a prominent Boston Brahmin family. He moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25
and went on to settle, work and marry there. He became a British citizen in
1927 at the age of 39.
Eliot first received attention for his
poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1915, and then for some
of the best-known poems in the English language, including "The Waste
Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday"
(1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in
the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to
present-day poetry".
The Eliots were a Boston Brahmin family
of England and New England. Eliot's father, Henry Ware Eliot was a successful
businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St
Louis. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns, wrote poetry and was a social
worker.
Eliot attended Smith Academy, the boys’
college and began to write poetry when he was 14 under the influence of Edward
Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His first published
poem, "A Fable For Feasters", was written as a school exercise and
was published in the Smith Academy Record in February 1905.
Analysis
A Song for Simeon, published in 1928,
is the second of the four “Ariel Poems”. Simeon, a biblical character, is an
old and devout Jew of Jerusalem who is waiting for the incarnation because he
has been told by the Holy Ghost that he is not to die until he has seen Christ.
He has been led to the temple, where child Jesus had been taken by his parents.
Taking the child Jesus in his arms, Simeon said: “Lord, now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy
salvation…”
A Song for Simeon is built on the event
of a new birth. In the poem, there is no sense of triumph or ‘rejoicing with
great joy’ for Simeon. On the contrary, there comes the knowledge of the
suffering to Simeon. But to Mary, mother of Christ, he prophesied suffering:
“Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many
hearts may be revealed.”
Eliot wrote A Song for Simeon, not of
Simeon. The poem can be read as a song for Simeon to sing, or as a song to be
sung for Simeon. There are two possibilities: we may imagine ourselves, hearing
either Simeon’s prophetic voice, or the voice of a poet singing on Simeon’s behalf
or in his honour from a later age and with viewpoint and insights denied to Simeon
himself. As the poem opens, we see, that it is Simeon’s own voice and words
that we hear in the poem. The plea repeated twice in the second and the third paragraph—
‘grant us thy peace’— comes from Simeon himself. In the end of the poem the words
‘not for me the ultimate vision’ could be spoken by none other than Simeon.
The poem begins with the Roman
hyacinths blooming in the bowls. Hyacinths were named after Hyacinthus, the
beautiful youth accidentally killed by Apollo. The place where Christ was born was
then under the Romans. Hence ‘Roman hyacinths’ is indicative of foreign
domination blooming amidst the dead season. The winter sun creeps and the
speaker waits for the death wind as if the wind will bear him away as it bears
away a light feather.
Winter and spring, life and death,
dying and rebirth, all create uncertainly and suspense but what is certain, is
the Simeon’s approaching end:
Dust in sunlight
and memory in corners
Wait for the wind
that chills towards the dead land.
Coming face to face with the new birth
fills Simeon with the sense of worthlessness of his own past life, a life with
which he has remained satisfied and at ease. His smugness,
There went never
any rejected from my door.
give way to the foreboding of the next
line:
Who shall remember
my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of
sorrow is come?
The time of sorrow means, Christ’s
arrest and crucifixion. The speaker’s fear, that where shall live his children’s
children at the time of sorrow, is the general fear that almost everyone has. Everyone
has fear of dying and hopes something after death, but no one knows what will
happen when one dies. We all have the doubt and fear as to what will happen
after our death to the people, whom we love, will they be happy?
…… foreign faces and the foreign
swords
suggest the invaders, war and foreign
domination.
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,
bring out Simeon’s consciousness of
coming sorrow. The ‘cords’ and ‘scourges’ refer to the punishment meted out to
Christ and ‘lamentation’ refers to the lamentation of the crowd of women, who
followed Christ on the way to the crucifixion. The Stations of Cross hinted by
‘stations’, is a Roman Catholic devotion. ‘Mountain of desolation’ has a
reference to the Calvary, where Christ’s crucifixion took place. Birth and
death are fused in the phrase ‘birth season of decease’ to suggest, that the
new birth is accompanied by pain not joy, foretelling of a death, which leads
to a truer life. The birth of the new ‘still unspeaking and unspoken Word’
ensures the destruction of the pattern of life hitherto held.
Simeon knows that suffering is
inevitable amidst glory and derision. Discipline of contemplation may be a
ladder to spiritual joy but Simeon is afraid, that he will not have that
ultimate vision and that he will die before that. Simeon can see the pain and
confusion of those who will truly be His disciples.
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.
The last lines show Simeon’s state of
mind into the future. Embodying far more than himself, he carries in himself
the life and the death of all his heirs. His fatigue as well as dying is like
that of those who will come after him. Having already ‘seen thy salvation’ and
realized that ‘the saints’ stair is not for him’, he should be allowed as a
faithful servant to depart with peace. Having seen incarnation and
salvation, Simeon wishes only for death
because he feels now that there is no time for him to make anything more
significant of his own life.
The poem is a Christian expression of
the paradoxical life that comes through death. The poet’s experience is
translated partially into traditional Christian symbols and partially into
personal creations.
The impending death of Simeon ‘who has
seen the salvation’ does not give him time enough to come face to face with
‘the ultimate vision’ but at least makes him aware of the ‘glory and derision
of those who will follow Christ.
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