(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.
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