posed more elegies than Swinburne.' The death of any prominent figure, such as
Robert Browning, almost always prompted Swinburne to compose a poem for the
occasion. 'Ave atque Vale' (1868), his farewell to Baudelaire, is an especially moving
tribute, and shows Swinburne focusing on a subject extremely close to his heart. For
Swinburne the work of his beloved French poet possessed a 'languid, lurid beauty';
to us the phrase may seem equally applicable to Swinburne's poetry.
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1 502 / ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Hymn to Proserpine
(After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)
Vicisti, Galilaee'
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess 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 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,2 with hair and harpstring of gold,
A bitter god to follow, a beautiful god to behold?
I am sick of singing; the bays3 burn deep and chafe. I am fain? glad
To rest a little from praise and grievous 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.
0 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 compassionate 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. 1 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,0 thicket 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?
1. Thou hast conquered, O Galilean (Latin); the poem as goddess of death and of sleep. The words supposedly addressed to Jesus, who grew up speaker also associates her with the earth (line 93) in Galilee, by the Roman emperor Julian the Apos-because she was the daughter of Ceres (or Demetate on his deathbed in 363. Julian had tried to ter), goddess of agriculture, whose Greek name revive paganism and to discourage Christianity, means 'Earth Mother.' Swinburne may have which, after a proclamation in 313, had been tol-derived some details here from the 4th-century erated in Rome. His efforts were unsuccessful. The Latin poet Claudian, whose long narrative The speaker of the poem, a Roman patrician and also Rape of Proserpina provides helpful background for a poet (line 9), is like Emperor Julian: he prefers this hymn. the old order of pagan gods. His hymn is addressed 2. Classical god of poetry, and in art the ideal of to the goddess Proserpina (the Greek Persephone), young male beauty. who was carried off by Pluto (Hades) to be queen 3. Laurel leaves of a poet's crown. of the underworld. In this role she is addressed in
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