Simeon

From W. H. Auden’s For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, musings of the Righteous Simeon, who held the Christ child at the temple and then prayed the Nunc Dimitis: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to enlighten the gentiles, and the glory of Thy people, Israel.

Simeon

…

As long as there were any roads to amnesia and anaesthesia still to be explored, in the rare wine or curiosity of cuisine as yet untested, any erotic variation as yet unimagined or unrealized, any method of torture as yet undevised, any style of conspicuous waste as yet unindulged, any eccentricity of mania or disease as yet unrepresented, there was still a hope that man had not been poisoned but transformed, that Paradise was not an eternal state from which he had been forever expelled, but a child estate which she had permanently outgrown, that the Fall had occurred by necessity.

…

Before the Infinite could manifest itself in the finite, it was necessary that man should first have reached that point along his road to Knowledge where, just as it rises from the swamps of confusion on the sunny slopes of Objectivity, it forks in opposite directions toward the One and the Many; where, therefore, in order to proceed it all, he must decide which is Real and which only Appearance, yet at the same time cannot escape the knowledge that his choice is arbitrary and subjective.

…

By the event of this birth the true significance of all other events is defined, for of every other occasion it can be said that could’ve been different, but of this birth it is the case that it could in no way be other than it is. And by the existence of this Child, the proper value of all other existences is given, for of every other creature it can be said that it has no extrinsic importance but of this Child it is the case that he is in no sense a symbol.