Luke 2:28

Then took he Him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said. Martial says of the dying swan "Sweet cadences the swan with voice that fails in death

Uttereth; his own dirge shaped of his own dying breath."

And so the last utterances of the wise are the sweetest, their powers maturing with years. Again Cicero tells us in the first Tusculan Disputation, "Not without reason are swans dedicated to Apollo, since they seem to have from him a gift of prophecy, by virtue of which, foreseeing the good that there is in death, they die with joy and in the act of singing." And Simeon here foresees, in this way the joy that through Christ is to come to him after his death, which must soon take place.