Our landwind is the breath
Of sorrows kissed to death
And joys that were:

Our ballast is a rose;

Our way lies where God knows
And love knows where.

We are in love's land to-day

Our seamen are fledged Loves,
Our masts are bills of doves,
Our decks fine gold;

Our ropes are dead maids' hair,
Our stores are love-shafts fair

And manifold.

We are in love's land to-day—

Where shall we land you, sweet?
On fields of strange men's feet,
Or fields near home?

Or where the fire-flowers blow,
Or where the flowers of snow
Or flowers of foam?

We are in love's hand to-day

Land. me, she says, where love
Shows but one shaft, one dove,

One heart, one hand.
-A shore like that, my dear,

Lies where no man will steer,

No maiden land.

[Imitated from THEOPHILE GAUTIER.]

332- HYMN TO PROSERPINE

AFTER THE PROCLAMATION IN ROME OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

Vicisti, Galilæe

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, 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 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. 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 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.

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 pæan, the breast 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 grievous 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 gray from thy breath;

We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness of death.

Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives 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 rack and rods!

O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods! Though all men abase them before you in spirits, and all knees

bend,

I kneel not, neither adore you, but standing, look to the end;

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

505

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, fulfilled of unspeakable 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 a

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 head 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 chasten 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 the years, in the changes of things,

Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall for

get 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 thronged Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,

Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to the dead.

Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a 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 flow

ering 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 into 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 view

less ways,

And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of

the bays.