Proserpina Lyrics

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 weep
For these give joy and sorrow;
but thou, Proserpina, sleep.

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 roar
and her face with the foam of the tides.

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.

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 weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected;
but she came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.

In the night where thine eyes are as moons
in heaven, the night where thou art
Where the silence is more than all tunes,
where sleep overflows from the heart,
Therefore now at thy feet I abide
for a season in silence.
I know I shall die as my fathers died,
and sleep as they sleep; even so.

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.

Extract from Hymn to Proserpine
Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837 - 1909)