Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ODE TO PROSERPINE, by JOHN COWPER POWYS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODE TO PROSERPINE, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: O daughter of demeter, yet once more
Last Line: And grants the key to her mysterious ways.
Subject(s): Death; Demeter; Faces; Mythology - Classical; Persephone; Dead, The; Ceres; Proserpine; Proserpina


O daughter of Demeter, yet once more
I touch my lute to hymn those virgin tears
Shed while the wailing of thy sweet compeers
Proclaimed thee borne to Pluto's sullen shore --
If thou hast aught left of thine ancient power,
Aught of that poppied spell that soothed away
The short-lived grief of Hellas' golden day,
O bless me too, child of this latter hour.

Faint through the oblivious mists of creeping time
Thy sweet face smiles upon us as of old,
And those Night-ravished locks of braided gold
Float o'er our vision like forgotten rhyme:
No more the great gods' footsteps make earth gay
With blossom'd flowers and fair Hesperian fruit;
Pale are the roses of this latter day,
The violets scentless, and the skylarks mute;
But naught can break thy temples, naught decry
Thine altars; Fate's inviolable decree
Hath made them surer than the unsounded sea,
Eternal as the everlasting sky.

Bitter to most thy poppies of sweet Death,
But my soul hungers for them; yea, would fain
Taste and have done with pleasure and with pain;
Forget the foolishness of mortal breath.
But hush! What sweet winds so salute my brows,
Whisp'ring of beauteous sounds and golden sights
Of all the green and heavenly fresh delights
That Earth, thy mother, on her child bestows?

Music of rain on primrose-scented meads,
Imperial daffodils that mock the wind,
And laugh rude-shaken from their slumbers blind
Beside the barren roots of moaning reeds,
Anemones foam-fair and fairy-frail,
Like gentle maidens won from dreamless sleep,
That blush to cast aside their Beauty's veil
And see the sunbeams thro' their curtains creep;
And violets whose dim odours, like the voice
Of Loves forgotten, steal our senses through,
And carollings of larks that still rejoice,
As did the morning stars when Earth was new.

Scentless and mute? Nay, tho' the gods are fled,
Tho' faded all the bloom of Enna's bowers,
Faded her beauteous fields, her breathing flowers,
The Spring is come again -- thou art not dead --
So long as May is longed for thy sweet praise
Shall flourish: only to the Bride of Death
Life's inmost secret Fate interpreteth,
And grants the key to her mysterious ways.





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