Song For Simeon

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a rope that the speaker feels is beginning to fray. As the rope of tradition frays, a new rope will be created (modernity) that provides a different route to climb through life. People will continue to climb the rope of tradition until only one strand of the rope is left to support the very few people left clinging to the old ways while the new rope continues to be strengthened allowing more people to climb it.
In T.S. Eliot uses many images to represent the change from the traditional to the modern. In the first stanza the speaker presents an image of hyacinths blooming, but then speaks of the winter sun rising. This at first seems contradictory, flowers do not bloom in the winter, but upon looking closer we see the hyacinths are blooming in bowls. Where the speaker says, "The stubborn season has made stand" (3), the stubborn season (winter) represents the old ways, and the hyacinths blooming represents the beginning of what is to come. Like the hyacinths, these new ...

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further leads us to believe the Infant is Christ, but he has yet to perform the actions and give the speeches that changed the face of religion forever. As those changes were on the horizon at the time of his birth, the change toward modernity is on the horizon at the time "A " was written. The image of asking God to console the people of Israel (the Jewish people) before the birth of Christianity, is a metaphor for the way the speaker would like to be consoled before the changes in his future. The fourth stanza also begins with a biblical reference. "According to thy word / They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation / With glory and derision, / Light upon light, ...

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