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)
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