Hymn to Proserpine

(In public domain due to expiration of copyright)

(Swinburne's Poems, London: Chatto & Windus, 1904, Vol. I pp. 67-73)

(Footnote not reproduced)

HYMN TO PROSERPINE



(AFTER THE PROCLAMATION IN ROME OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH)



Vicisti, Galilaee



I HAVE live long enough, having seen one thing,

    that love hath an end ;

Godess and maiden and queen, be near me now

    and befriend

Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the

    seasons that laugh or that weep ;

For these give joy and sorrow ; but thou, Proserpina,

    sleep.

Sweet is the treading of the wine, and sweet the feet of

    the dove ;

But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes

    or love.

Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of

    gold,

A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?

I am sick of singing : the bays burn deep and chafe :

    I am fain

To rest a little from praise and grevious pleasure

    and pain.

For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily

    breath,

We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as

    death.

O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped

    out in a day '

From your wrath is the world released, redeemed

    from your chains, men say.

New Gods are crowned in the city ; their flowers

    have broken your rods ;

They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young com-

  passionate Gods.

But for me their new device is barren, the days are

    bare ;

Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten

    that were.

Time and the Gods are at strife ; ye dwell in the

    midst thereof,

Draining a little life from the barren breasts of

    love.

I say to you, cease, take rest ; yea, I say to you all,

    be at peace,

Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom

    shall cease.

Wilt thou yet take all Galilean? but these thou shalt

    not take,

The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the

    nymphs in the brake ;

Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with

    tenderer breath ;

And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before

    death ;

All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,

Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that

    flicker like fire.

More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all

    these things?

Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.

A little while and we die ; shall life not thrive as it

    may ?

For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.

And grief is a grevious thing, and a man hath enough

    of his tears :

Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to

    blacken his years?

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean ; the world has

    grown grey from thy breath ;

We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the

    fullness of death.

Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day ;

But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel out-

    lives not May.

Sleep, shall we sleep after all ? for the world is not

    sweet in the end ;

For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin

    and rend.

Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock

    that abides ;

But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face

    with the foam of the tides.

O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of

    racks and rods !

O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted

    Gods !

Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and

    all knees bend,

I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to

    the end.

All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows

    are cast

Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to

    the surf of the past :

Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between

    the remote sea-gates,

Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and

    deep death waits :

Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about

    with the seas as with wings,

And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of un-

    speakable things,

White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and

    serpentine-curled,

Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the

    wave of the world.

The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the

    storms flee away ;

In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and

    snared as prey ;

In its sides is the north-wind bound ; and its salt is

    of all men's tears ;

With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse

    of years :

With travail of day after day, and with trouble of

    hour upon hour ;

And bitter as blood is the spray ; and the crests are

    as fangs that devour :

And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing

    of spirits to be ;

And its noise as the noise in a dream ; and its depth

    as the roots of the sea :

And the height of its heads as the height of the

    utmost stars of the air :

And the ends of the earth at the might thereof

    tremble, and time is made bare.

Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chsten

    the high sea with rods?

Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is

    older than all ye Gods?

All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass

    and be past ;

Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves

    be upon you at last.

In the darkness of time, in the deeps of years, in

    the changes of things,

Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world

    shall forget you for kings.

Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy

    lords and our forefathers trod,

Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou

    being dead art a God,

Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen,

    and hidden her head,

Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall

    go down to thee dead.

Of the maiden thy mother men sing as goddess

    with grace clad around ;

Thou art throned where another was king ; where

    another was queen she is crowned.

Yea, once we had sight of another ; but now she

    is queen, say these.

Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom

    of flowering seas,

Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment,

    and fair as the foam,

And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and

    mother of Rome.

For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to

    sorrow ; but ours,

Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour

    of flowers,

White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour,

    a flame,

Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth

    grew sweet with her name.

For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and

    rejected ; but she

Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial,

    her foot on the sea.

And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and

    the viewless ways,

And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue

    stream of the bays.

Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that

    ye should not fall.

Ye were all so fair that are broken ; and one more

    fair than ye all.

But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely

    abide in the end ;

Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and

    befriend.

O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and

    blossom of birth,

I am also, I also, thy brother ; I go as I came unto

    earth.

In the night were thine eyes are as moons are in

    heaven, the night where thou art,

Where the silence is more than all tunes, where

    sleep overflows from the heart,

Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world,

    and the red rose is white,

And the wind fall sfaint as it blows with the fume of

    the flowers of night,

And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow

    of Gods from afar

Grows dim in thine ears and deep asthe deep dim

    soul of a star

In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens

    untrod by the sun,

Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget

    what is done and undone.

Thou art more than the Gods who number the days

    of our temporal breath ;

For these give labour and slumber ; but thou,

    Proserpina, death.

Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in

    silence. I know

I shall die as my forefathers died, sleep as they

    sleep ; even so.

For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze

    for a span ;

A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is

    man.

So long I endure, no longer ; and laugh not again,

    neither weep.

For there is no God found stronger than death ; and

    death is a sleep.