Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE DEPARTURE OF PROSERPINE, by FRANCIS LEDWIDGE Poet's Biography First Line: Old mother earth for me already grieves Last Line: No secret turning leads from the gods' way. Subject(s): Mythology; Mythology - Classical; Persephone; Proserpine; Proserpina | ||||||||
OLD mother Earth for me already grieves, Her morns wake weeping and her noons are dim, Silence has left her woods, and all the leaves Dance in the windy shadows on the rim Of the dull lake thro' which I soon shall pass To my dark bridal bed Down in the hollow chambers of the dead. Will not the thunder hide me if I call, Wrapt in the corner of some distant star The gods have never known? Alas! alas! My voice has left with the last wing, my fall Shall crush the flowery fields with gloom, as far As swallows fly. Would I might die And in a solitude of roses lie As the last bud's outblown. Then nevermore Demeter would be heard Wail in the blowing rain, but every shower Would come bound up with rainbows to the birds Wrapt in a dusty wing, and the dry flower Hanging a shrivelled lip. This weary change from light to darkness fills My heart with twilight, and my brightest day Dawns over thunder and in thunder spills Its urn of gladness With a sadness Through which the slow dews drip And the bat goes over on a thorny wing. Is it a dream that once I used to sing From AEgean shores across her rocky isles, Making the bells of Babylon to ring Over the wiles That lifted me from darkness to the Spring? And the King Seeing his wine in blossom on the tree Danced with the queen a merry roundelay, And all the blue circumference of the day Was loud with flying song. ----- -- But let me pass along: What brooks it the unfree to thus delay? No secret turning leads from the gods' way. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PERSEPHONE, FALLING by RITA DOVE ADONIS IN WINTER by KENNETH REXROTH SONG OF THE STYGIAN NAIADES by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES PERSEPHONE PAUSES by CAROLYN KIZER MEMORIAL TO D.C.: 2. PRAYER TO PERSEPHONE by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY EVENING CLOUDS by FRANCIS LEDWIDGE |
|