Published 1842. Written 1833 (dated, Heath MS), by 27 Nov. (Letters i 98; Mem. i 130). It is unlikely to have been written in Oct., the month when T. heard of Hallam’s death. But W. H. Thompson wrote to J. W. Blakesley, 11 Nov. 1833, on Hallam’s death. and said of T.: ‘He seemed less overcome than one would have expected: though, when he first arrived, he was very low – He left among us some magnificent poems and fragments of poems. Among the rest a monologue or soliloquy of one Simeon Stylites: or as he calls himself Simeon of the Pillar: a poem which we hold to be a wonderful disclosure of that mixture of self-loathing self-complacence and self-sacrifice which caused our forefathers to do penance when alive and to be canonized when dead. It is to be feared however that the men of this generation will hold it to be somewhat too unwholesome; the description of his sufferings being too minute for any but those whom the knowledge of the Art holds above the subject’ (P. Allen, The Cambridge Apostles, 1978, pp. 162–3). The important MSS are: H.Nbk 13:19, an early much-corrected draft of ll. 1–68, with stubs that include ll. 108–10 (A); revised as H.Nbk 13:13 (B); T.Nbk 22; and Heath MS. Simeon was the first and most famous of the pillar-hermits (Stylites, from Greek στυ̑λοβ, pillar). H. T. gives as the sources William Hone’s Every-Day Book (1825), which supplied almost all the details (under ‘January 5’), and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 37. FitzGerald says that ‘this is one of the Poems A. T would read with grotesque Grimness, especially at such passages as “Coughs, Aches, Stitches, etc.” [ll. 13–16], laughing aloud at times’. H. T. describes St Telemachus (III 224) as its ‘pendant’. Cp. St Agnes’ Eve (I 605), and St Lawrence (I 324). J. H. Buckley (p. 26) suggests that it was influenced by contempt for Charles Simeon, a notoriously exclamatory and influential preacher at Cambridge. Culler (p. 24) quotes Cambridge contemporaries on ‘a great saint called Simeon’, and on ‘many other humorous and harmless little sarcasms of a like kind’. Culler also (p. 257) notes that T. ‘apparently did not know much about the figure who purports to be the original of his poem. W. E. H. Lecky wrote, “He once confessed to me that when he wrote his Simeon Stylites he did not know that the story was a Syrian one, and had accordingly given it a Northern colouring which he now perceived to be wrong”’ (Mat. iii 324). R. Pattison suggests that ‘the whole monologue is loosely based on Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Prologue’ (Tennyson and Tradition, 1979, p. 79). In his review of 1842 in the Church of England Quarterly Review (Oct. 1842), Leigh Hunt called it ‘a powerfully graphic, and in some respects appalling satire on the pseudo-aspirations of egotistical asceticism and superstition…. We do not recollect to have met with a more startling picture of the sordid and the aspiring – the selfish and the self-sacrificing – the wretched, weak body and mind and resolute soul – the abject, the dominant, the stupid, the imaginative – and, alas, the misgiving … all mixed up in the poor phantom-like person of the almost incredible Saint of the Pillar – the almost solitary Christian counterpart of the Yogees of the Hindoos, who let birds build in their hair, and the nails of their fingers grow through the palms of their hands. We say Christian, out of Christian charity; for though real Christianity is a quintessence of good sense, both in its human and angelical aspirations, as the flower of it in due time will make manifest, yet these and other dark absurdities have, no doubt, lurked about its roots, and for a time, with equal absurdity, been confounded with the flower.’ On T. and the art of the penultimate, see W. E. Fredeman, University of Toronto Quarterly xxxviii (1968) 69–83.
Although I be the basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,
I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,
Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,
Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.
Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,
This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years,
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold,
In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps,
A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud,
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne
Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;
And I had hoped that ere this period closed
Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.
O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.
Pain heaped ten-hundred-fold to this, were still
Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,
Than were those lead-like tons of sin that crushed
My spirit flat before thee.
O Lord, Lord;
Thou knowest I bore this better at the first,
For I was strong and hale of body then;
And though my teeth, which now are dropt away,
Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard
Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon,
I drowned the whoopings of the owl with sound
Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw
An angel stand and watch me, as I sang.
Now am I feeble grown; my end draws nigh;
I hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am,
So that I scarce can hear the people hum
About the column’s base, and almost blind,
And scarce can recognise the fields I know;
And both my thighs are rotted with the dew;
Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry,
While my stiff spine can hold my weary head,
Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone,
Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin.
O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,
Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?
Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?
Show me the man hath suffered more than I.
For did not all thy martyrs die one death?
For either they were stoned, or crucified,
Or burned in fire, or boiled in oil, or sawn
In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here
Today, and whole years long, a life of death.
Bear witness, if I could have found a way
(And heedfully I sifted all my thought)
More slowly-painful to subdue this home
Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,
I had not stinted practice, O my God.
For not alone this pillar-punishment,
Not this alone I bore: but while I lived
In the white convent down the valley there,
For many weeks about my loins I wore
The rope that haled the buckets from the well,
Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;
And spake not of it to a single soul,
Until the ulcer, eating through my skin,
Betrayed my secret penance, so that all
My brethren marvelled greatly. More than this
I bore, whereof, O God, thou knowest all.
Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee,
I lived up there on yonder mountain side.
My right leg chained into the crag, I lay
Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones;
Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, and twice
Blacked with thy branding thunder, and sometimes
Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not,
Except the spare chance-gift of those that came
To touch my body and be healed, and live:
And they say then that I worked miracles,
Whereof my fame is loud amongst mankind,
Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, O God,
Knowest alone whether this was or no.
Have mercy, mercy! cover all my sin.
Then, that I might be more alone with thee,
Three years I lived upon a pillar, high
Six cubits, and three years on one of twelve;
And twice three years I crouched on one that rose
Twenty by measure; last of all, I grew
Twice ten long weary weary years to this,
That numbers forty cubits from the soil.
I think that I have borne as much as this –
Or else I dream – and for so long a time,
If I may measure time by yon slow light,
And this high dial, which my sorrow crowns–
So much – even so.
And yet I know not well,
For that the evil ones come here, and say,
‘Fall down, O Simeon: thou hast suffered long
For ages and for ages!’ then they prate
Of penances I cannot have gone through,
Perplexing me with lies; and oft I fall,
Maybe for months, in such blind lethargies
That Heaven, and Earth, and Time are choked.
But yet
Bethink thee, Lord, while thou and all the saints
Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earth
House in the shade of comfortable roofs,
Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food,
And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls,
I, ’tween the spring and downfall of the light,
Bow down one thousand and two hundred times,
To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the saints;
Or in the night, after a little sleep,
I wake: the chill stars sparkle; I am wet
With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost.
I wear an undressed goatskin on my back;
A grazing iron collar grinds my neck;
And in my weak, lean arms I lift the cross,
And strive and wrestle with thee till I die:
O mercy, mercy! wash away my sin.
O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;
A sinful man, conceived and born in sin:
’Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;
Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this,
That here come those that worship me? Ha! ha!
They think that I am somewhat. What am I?
The silly people take me for a saint,
And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers:
And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here)
Have all in all endured as much, and more
Than many just and holy men, whose names
Are registered and calendared for saints.
Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
What is it I can have done to merit this?
I am a sinner viler than you all.
It may be I have wrought some miracles,
And cured some halt and maimed; but what of that?
It may be, no one, even among the saints,
May match his pains with mine; but what of that?
Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,
And in your looking you may kneel to God.
Speak! is there any of you halt or maimed?
I think you know I have some power with Heaven
From my long penance: let him speak his wish.
Yes, I can heal him. Power goes forth from me.
They say that they are healed. Ah, hark! they shout
‘St Simeon Stylites.’ Why, if so,
God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul,
God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be,
Can I work miracles and not be saved?
This is not told of any. They were saints.
It cannot be but that I shall be saved;
Yea, crowned a saint. They shout, ‘Behold a saint!’
And lower voices saint me from above.
Courage, St Simeon! This dull chrysalis
Cracks into shining wings, and hope ere death
Spreads more and more and more, that God hath now
Sponged and made blank of crimeful record all
My mortal archives.
O my sons, my sons,
I, Simeon of the pillar, by surname
Stylites, among men; I, Simeon,
The watcher on the column till the end;
I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine bakes;
I, whose bald brows in silent hours become
Unnaturally hoar with rime, do now
From my high nest of penance here proclaim
That Pontius and Iscariot by my side
Showed like fair seraphs. On the coals I lay,
A vessel full of sin: all hell beneath
Made me boil over. Devils plucked my sleeve,
Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me.
I smote them with the cross; they swarmed again.
In bed like monstrous apes they crushed my chest:
They flapped my light out as I read: I saw
Their faces grow between me and my book;
With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine
They burst my prayer. Yet this way was left,
And by this way I ’scaped them. Mortify
Your flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns;
Smite, shrink not, spare not. If it may be, fast
Whole Lents, and pray. I hardly, with slow steps,
With slow, faint steps, and much exceeding pain,
Have scrambled past those pits of fire, that still
Sing in mine ears. But yield not me the praise:
God only through his bounty hath thought fit,
Among the powers and princes of this world,
To make me an example to mankind,
Which few can reach to. Yet I do not say
But that a time may come – yea, even now,
Now, now, his footsteps smite the threshold stairs
Of life – I say, that time is at the doors
When you may worship me without reproach;
For I will leave my relics in your land,
And you may carve a shrine about my dust,
And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones,
When I am gathered to the glorious saints.
While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest pain
Ran shrivelling through me, and a cloudlike change,
In passing, with a grosser film made thick
These heavy, horny eyes. The end!
the end! Surely the end!
What’s here? a shape, a shade,
A flash of light. Is that the angel there
That holds a crown? Come, blessèd brother, come.
I know thy glittering face. I waited long;
My brows are ready. What! deny it now?
Nay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I clutch it. Christ!
’Tis gone: ’tis here again; the crown! the crown!
So now ’tis fitted on and grows to me,
And from it melt the dews of Paradise,
Sweet! sweet! spikenard, and balm, and frankincense.
Ah! let me not be fooled, sweet saints: I trust
That I am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven.
Speak, if there be a priest, a man of God,
Among you there, and let him presently
Approach, and lean a ladder on the shaft,
And climbing up into my airy home,
Deliver me the blessèd sacrament;
For by the warning of the Holy Ghost,
I prophesy that I shall die tonight,
A quarter before twelve.
But thou, O Lord,
Aid all this foolish people; let them take
Example, pattern: lead them to thy light.
[1833. In Memoriam – see p. 331]
¶210. 1. be … mankind] T.MS 1st reading; was the lowest in the scale T.MS.
2] Several drafts:
(i) Plunged to the throat in crime – polluted, blurred,
Blained, rank, corrupt, one crust of noisome filth – A
(ii) Plunged to the throat in slough of crime – pollute,
Blained, blurred, corrupt – one crust of noisome filth – Heath MS 1st reading
(iii) Sloughed to the throat in crime – from scalp to sole
Blood, bone, breath, sinew, pulse and motion, sin – Heath MS T.MS had the first line of (i), revised to that of (ii).
Based on Deuteronomy xxviii 35: ‘The Lord shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head.’ Job ii 7: ‘and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.’ Isaiah i 6: ‘From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores.’
4. mad with] loud in A.
5–6] I will not cease to clamour, day and night A-B.
7] Not A. gates] ears Heath MS correction by T.
9–10] Let this avail, O God, that thrice ten years A.
11] Not A-B.
12–13] Transposed at first in A:
…. thirsts, hour after hour,
In aches and stitches, cramps and ulcerous pangs,
A reminiscence of Prospero to Caliban: ‘tonight thou shalt have cramps, / Side-stitches … I’ll rack thee with old cramps, / Fill all thy bones with aches’, The Tempest I ii 326–7, 370–1 See ll. 170–5n.
14] Not A-B. A sign] Here fixed T.MS 1st reading. betwixt] between T.MS, Heath MS.
15. on … pillar] A; upon tall pillars B.
17. closed] Not A-B.
18] Into thy rest thou wouldst have caught me up A.
20. Revelation vii 9, ‘clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands’.
21. O … Lord] Mistake me not, my God. A-B; My God, mistake me not: T.MS, Heath MS.
23–4] Several drafts:
(i) A is confused, but works towards (ii)
(ii) Pain summed tenfold to this – ten-hundredfold
Heaped on to that – beyond all form and mode
Of tolerance – were less ten-hundredfold
Than I deserve; and heavier to endure,
If not a little by thy finger stayed, B
(iii) Pain summed tenfold to this – tenhundredfold
Heaped on to that – beyond all agonies,
All energies of tolerance – were less
Tenhundredfold less burthensome to bear T.MS, Heath MS
25] These weights – these leadlike tons of sin that crush B.
29. dropt away] fallen out A-B.
37–9] Added in A, which is very confused at this point.
40. ‘One of his thighs rotted a whole year, during which time he stood on one leg only’ (Hone).
42] Added in A.
46. Matthew xix 25: ‘When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?’
47] Not A; preceding l. 45. B.
48] Added in A.
49–53] Not A; added to margin of B (l. 52: In sunder by the ribs …).
52. In twain] Atwain T.MS, Heath MS.
55^6] Devising every means and mode of ill A-B, T.MS, Heath MS.
56. slowly-painful] painful-slow A-B, T.MS, Heath MS 1st reading. subdue] mortify A-B, T.MS, Heath MS 1st reading. this home] my flesh A first reading, which then added l. 57. Based on Romans vii 17–18: ‘sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.’
60. lived] dwelt A.
61. Where according to Hone he was thought over-austere.
62. wore] bore A.
64] Added in A, where it appeared ll. 62^3.
65] And told it not unto a single soul A.
67. so that all] by the scent A-B, T.MS, Heath MS 1st reading.
68] So that my brethren marvelled. More than this A-B, T.MS, Heath MS 1st reading; My brethren marvelled. More, much more than this Heath MS. A breaks off here.
70–1] …. thee / More nigh, I lived on yonder mountain-top – B, T.MS 1st reading.
72. crag, I lay] solid crag B first reading.
74–5] Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, sometimes B.
80. amongst] among B, T.MS, Heath MS.
81. Acts viii 7, ‘Many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed’.
82. this was] I did B, T.MS, Heath MS.
83. Psalm lxxxv 2, ‘Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin.’
86. cubit: about 18 inches.
91–102] Not B, T.MS; added on later page of Heath MS.
93. light] fire Heath MS 1st reading. Simeon thinks of the pillar as a sundial.
96. For that] Because Heath MS.
98. then] and Heath MS.
106] Not B; added in T.MS.
107. Simeon likens himself to Christ, Matthew viii 20: ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.’
108–9] Between the rise and falling of the light
I bow … A
109. According to Hone and Gibbon, one thousand two hundred and forty four.
111–13] Not B.
111–14] I wear an undrest goatskin, crackling-stiff
With frost, and often drenched in drifts of rain. T.MS 1st reading T.MS revised l. 111, ‘Or’, to ‘And’, and then back to ‘Or’.
112. chill] still Heath MS.
113. Cp. Gray, The Descent of Odin 31–3: ‘Long on these mould’ring bones have beat / The winter’s snow, the summer’s heat, / The drenching dews, and driving rain!’
114. on my back] hard and stiff B.
115] I wear an iron collar round my neck B.
116. weak, lean] withered B. As shown in the illustration to Hone.
117. And … wrestle] Wrestling and striving B. Genesis xxxii 24, ‘And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.’
118 O] Have T.MS 1st reading. Acts xxii 16: Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins.’
120. Psalm li 5: ‘I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.’
122. Contrast the martyrdom of Stephen, Acts vii 60: And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge’.
124. somewhat … I?] somewhat on the earth. B, T.MS 1st reading.
126. of] and B 1st reading.
131. kneel to] worship B.
132. can] Not B, T.MS.
133] Not B, where it appears later; see ll. 166–82n.
134. wrought] worked B.
136–7] Added in T.MS.
136–9] Not B.
143–7] Hearken, my brethren, for the power of God Is strong in me to preach and save your souls. B See ll. 157 ^8n.
146–7. Suggesting Leviticus xxiii 10–11: ‘reap the harvest thereof…. And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you.’
149] Added in T.MS.
153 ^4] Hung o’er the abysses of immortal Death T.MS deleted.
154. wings, ^ and] Death mortal steals / A lengthening shade upon me T.MS deleted.
156. of] the Heath MS 1st reading.
157. mortal archives] tablets up in Heaven T.MS 1st reading.
157^8] God’s grace is strong through me to preach and save. T.MS, Heath MS. See ll. 143–7n.
160 ^61] Whom the lark passeth in her road to Heaven –
To whose chill ears bats hook their leathern wings, B
Heath MS has only the second line. T.MS has the lines transposed, with the line ‘Whom the lark …’ deleted.
161. I… whose] Even I, whose withered B.
166. seraphs. ^ On] Jesus caught one hand,
The Devil grasped the other: I was torn
In twain betwixt them. T.MS deleted
166–82] Show like fair Seraphs. O my sons, my sons
I am a sinner viler than you all,
The last and least of men. Give God the praise: B See L. 133n.
168. over. ^ Devils] Jesus grasped one hand,
That Evil one the other. I was torn
In twain betwixt them. T.MS deleted
plucked my sleeve] twitched my beard T.MS 1st reading. Cp. Bunyan’s Grace Abounding: ‘I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehensions of Devils, and wicked spirits.’
169. caught at me] plucked my sleeve T.MS 1st reading. Revelation ix 11: ‘The angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon.’ Tobit iii 8: ‘Asmodeus the evil spirit’.
170–1] Added in T.MS.
170–5. Cp. Caliban, on Prospero’s ‘spirits’, The Tempest II ii 8–10: ‘For every trifle are they set upon me – / Sometime like apes, that mow and chatter at me, / And after bite me.’ See ll. 12–13n.
172. flapped] blew T.MS 1st reading.
178. Isaiah lviii 1: ‘Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.’
179. Whole Lents: as Simeon did in Hone.
183. God … his] God in his grace and B; ’Tis God who in his T.MS 1st reading (then retaining in); Heath MS.
184] Not B.
187. yea] and B.
189. that] (ital.) T.MS.
191–3] I leave my bones, my relicks in your land B.
197–200. Cp. Keats, Endymion ii 323–4: ‘Before mine eyes thick films and shadows float – / O let me ’noint them with the heaven’s light!’
198. heavy, horny eyes] globes of arid horn B.
199. shape … shade] shade … shape B.
200. the] an B, T.MS, Heath MS. The angel is mentioned in Hone.
202] Not B.
204. So … Christ!] is it? is it not? B; So I have it – God! T.MS 1st reading, Heath MS.
205. the crown! the crown!] Give me the crown. B. Based on Revelation ii 7–10: ‘To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life … and I will give thee a crown of life.’ J. McCue compares Hamlet I i 141–2: ‘’Tis here.’ ‘’Tis here’. / ‘’Tis gone’.
208. ‘When Simeon died, Anthony smelt a precious odour emanating from his body’ (Hone).
209] O Holy, Holy, Holy now I know B, T.MS 1st reading, Heath MS.
210. whole] white B. Heaven] thee T.MS 1st reading, Heath MS.
214. my] 1846; mine 1842–5.
217. The prophecy is not in Gibbon or Hone. See Bede, ed. A. Hamilton Thompson (1935), pp. 211–13: ‘Sometimes the day was prophesied by the appearance of angels in a vision … This particular form of prophecy is of course a commonplace in the lives of the saints from the Life of St. Antony onwards. … The idea underlying this widespread tradition was that the saint was thus granted time to prepare himself for the great change and to be fortified by receiving the Communion.’
218–19. Psalm lxxiv 18: ‘O Lord, and that the foolish people have blasphemed thy name.’ Jeremiah v 21: ‘Hear now this, O foolish people’.
220. Example, pattern:] Pattern from me – so T.MS, Heath MS.