Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

W. Garrett Horder, comp. The Poets’ Bible: New Testament. 1895.

Simeon

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849)

IN the huge temple, deck’d by Herod’s pride,

Who fain would bribe a God he ne’er believed,

Kneels a meek woman, that hath once conceived,

Tho’ she was never like an earthly bride.

And yet the stainless would be purified,

And wash away the stain that yet was none,

And for the birth of her immaculate Son,

With the stern rigour of the law complied:

The duty paid received its due reward

When Simeon bless’d the baby in her arm;

And though he plainly told her that a sword

Must pierce her soul, she felt no weak alarm,

For that for which a Prophet thank’d the Lord,

Once to have seen, could never end in harm.