{
 "id": "t-s-eliot/a-song-for-simeon",
 "title": "A Song for Simeon",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "T. S. Eliot",
 "poet_slug": "t-s-eliot",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1928,
  "venue": "A Song for Simeon (London, Faber & Gwyer, 1928), The Ariel Poems no. 16",
  "note": "A single-poem pamphlet of four pages, issued in the Ariel Poems series; it is not modelled here as a volume in the poet's books. No earlier periodical printing has been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14632840M"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/t-s-eliot_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1567",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009592742",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1321",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001835100",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100218549",
   "https://archive.org/details/poems19091925030616mbp",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedpoems1900elio",
   "https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200705",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswritteninea00elio",
   "https://theworld.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 37,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 68,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The stubborn season has made stand.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My life is light, waiting for the death wind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a feather on the back of my hand.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dust in sunlight and memory in corners",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Grant us thy peace.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have walked many years in this city,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have given and taken honour and ease.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There went never any rejected from my door.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When the time of sorrow is come?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grant us thy peace.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now at this birth season of decease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grant Israel’s consolation",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "According to thy word.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With glory and derision,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not for me the ultimate vision.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grant me thy peace.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thine also.)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let thy servant depart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Having seen thy salvation.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}