Hymn To Proserpine (after The Proclamation Of The Christian Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJKD DLLMMGGNKOOHHPQGGHHB BRRIIBBBBSSOOBBHHPQK KAAJJIIBBOOBBBBBBTTU UVVWWAAXXYYBBZZBBBBA 2A2B2B2GGC2C2D2D2CC| Vicisti Galil aelig e | A |
| I have lived long enough having seen one thing that love hath an end | B |
| Goddess and maiden and queen be near me now and befriend | B |
| Thou art more than the day or the morrow the seasons that laugh or that weep | C |
| For these give joy and sorrow but thou Proserpina sleep | C |
| Sweet is the treading of wine and sweet the feet of the dove | D |
| But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love | D |
| Yea is not even Apollo with hair and harpstring of gold | E |
| A bitter God to follow a beautiful God to behold | E |
| I am sick of singing the bays burn deep and chafe I am fain | F |
| To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain | F |
| For the Gods we know not of who give us our daily breath | G |
| We know they are cruel as love or life and lovely as death | G |
| O Gods dethroned and deceased cast forth wiped out in a day | H |
| From your wrath is the world released redeemed from your chains men say | H |
| New Gods are crowned in the city their flowers have broken your rods | I |
| They are merciful clothed with pity the young compassionate Gods | I |
| But for me their new device is barren the days are bare | J |
| Things long past over suffice and men forgotten that were | K |
| Time and the Gods are at strife ye dwell in the midst thereof | D |
| Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love | D |
| I say to you cease take rest yea I say to you all be at peace | L |
| Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease | L |
| Wilt thou take all Galilean but these thou shalt not take | M |
| The laurel the palms and the paean the breasts of the nymphs in the brake | M |
| Breasts more soft than a dove's that tremble with tenderer breath | G |
| And all the wings of the Loves and all the joy before death | G |
| All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre | N |
| Dropped and deep in the flowers with strings that flicker like fire | K |
| More than these wilt thou give things fairer than all these things | O |
| Nay for a little we live and life hath mutable wings | O |
| A little while and we die shall life not thrive as it may | H |
| For no man under the sky lives twice outliving his day | H |
| And grief is a grievous thing and a man hath enough of his tears | P |
| Why should he labour and bring fresh grief to blacken his years | Q |
| Thou hast conquered O pale Galilean the world has grown grey from thy breath | G |
| We have drunken of things Lethean and fed on the fullness of death | G |
| Laurel is green for a season and love is sweet for a day | H |
| But love grows bitter with treason and laurel outlives not May | H |
| Sleep shall we sleep after all for the world is not sweet in the end | B |
| For the old faiths loosen and fall the new years ruin and rend | B |
| Fate is a sea without shore and the soul is a rock that abides | R |
| But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides | R |
| O lips that the live blood faints in the leavings of racks and rods | I |
| O ghastly glories of saints dead limbs of gibbeted Gods | I |
| Though all men abase them before you in spirit and all knees bend | B |
| I kneel not neither adore you but standing look to the end | B |
| All delicate days and pleasant all spirits and sorrows are cast | B |
| Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past | B |
| Where beyond the extreme sea wall and between the remote sea gates | S |
| Waste water washes and tall ships founder and deep death waits | S |
| Where mighty with deepening sides clad about with the seas as with wings | O |
| And impelled of invisible tides and fulfilled of unspeakable things | O |
| White eyed and poisonous finned shark toothed and serpentine curled | B |
| Rolls under the whitening wind of the future the wave of the world | B |
| The depths stand naked in sunder behind it the storms flee away | H |
| In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey | H |
| In its sides is the north wind bound and its salt is of all men's tears | P |
| With light of ruin and sound of changes and pulse of years | Q |
| With travail of day after day and with trouble of hour upon hour | K |
| And bitter as blood is the spray and the crests are as fangs that devour | K |
| And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be | A |
| And its noise as the noise in a dream and its depth as the roots of the sea | A |
| And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air | J |
| And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble and time is made bare | J |
| Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins will ye chasten the high sea with rods | I |
| Will ye take her to chain her with chains who is older than all ye Gods | I |
| All ye as a wind shall go by as a fire shall ye pass and be past | B |
| Ye are Gods and behold ye shall die and the waves be upon you at last | B |
| In the darkness of time in the deeps of the years in the changes of things | O |
| Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps and the world shall forget you for kings | O |
| Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers trod | B |
| Though these that were Gods are dead and thou being dead art a God | B |
| Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen and hidden her head | B |
| Yet thy kingdom shall pass Galilean thy dead shall go down to thee dead | B |
| Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around | B |
| Thou art throned where another was king where another was queen she is crowned | B |
| Yea once we had sight of another but now she is queen say these | T |
| Not as thine not as thine was our mother a blossom of flowering seas | T |
| Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment and fair as the foam | U |
| And fleeter than kindled fire and a goddess and mother of Rome | U |
| For thine came pale and a maiden and sister to sorrow but ours | V |
| Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers | V |
| White rose of the rose white water a silver splendour a flame | W |
| Bent down unto us that besought her and earth grew sweet with her name | W |
| For thine came weeping a slave among slaves and rejected but she | A |
| Came flushed from the full flushed wave and imperial her foot on the sea | A |
| And the wonderful waters knew her the winds and the viewless ways | X |
| And the roses grew rosier and bluer the sea blue stream of the bays | X |
| Ye are fallen our lords by what token we wise that ye should not fall | Y |
| Ye were all so fair that are broken and one more fair than ye all | Y |
| But I turn to her still having seen she shall surely abide in the end | B |
| Goddess and maiden and queen be near me now and befriend | B |
| O daughter of earth of my mother her crown and blossom of birth | Z |
| I am also I also thy brother I go as I came unto earth | Z |
| In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven the night where thou art | B |
| Where the silence is more than all tunes where sleep overflows from the heart | B |
| Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world and the red rose is white | B |
| And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night | B |
| And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar | A2 |
| Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star | A2 |
| In the sweet low light of thy face under heavens untrod by the sun | B2 |
| Let my soul with their souls find place and forget what is done and undone | B2 |
| Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath | G |
| Let these give labour and slumber but thou Proserpina death | G |
| Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence I know | C2 |
| I shall die as my fathers died and sleep as they sleep even so | C2 |
| For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span | D2 |
| A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man | D2 |
| So long I endure no longer and laugh not again neither weep | C |
| For there is no God found stronger than death and death is a sleep | C |
Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1)
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