Stylites

One more, and I’ll lay off the poetry for a while. One more ’cause it’s late at night and I’m feeling kinda blue.

Also, very busy with the girls and polishing up my novels.

Also, the wife is flying out next week for her annual sales trip, so there’s all that to deal with.

Also, also, also …

Ah, heck! I’ve had enough alsos in my life.

Here’s Tennyson’s St. Simeon Stylites, a brutally vivid poem about that guy who spent 30 or 40 years on top of a pillar, naked to the elements, in some highly original form of self-flagellation. What can I say; it resonated with me!


Altho' 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, morn 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 heap'd ten-hundred-fold to this, were still
Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,
Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd
My spirit flat before thee.


And it goes on for three or four more pages, a poetic Jobian verbal joust with the Almighty, and I’m not sure quite what it all means.