Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A DAY AT CASTROGIOVANNI: 2. PROSERPINE BY LAKE PERGUSA, by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A DAY AT CASTROGIOVANNI: 2. PROSERPINE BY LAKE PERGUSA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Lifted on hollow lands and grassy miles
Last Line: Dark lover, death, -- was he not beautiful?
Subject(s): Beauty; Death; Lakes; Persephone; Dead, The; Pools; Ponds; Proserpine; Proserpina


LIFTED on hollow lands and grassy miles,
The lake low-girdled, to all memories sweet,
Draws heaven to itself; and wave-flung smiles
The laughter of the waters in the wheat.
It is a morn of May
Before the heat of day;
The swallow comes among the reeds to drink
The wind-blown cup of blue amid the green,
And sings his song; and near or far is seen
The plash of wild-fowl on the life-fringed brink;
See, every step I take
Stirs up a host of azure dragon-flies;
Floored with swift wings the path cerulean lies,
And round my knees flutters a living lake.

I pick the flowers that Proserpine let fall,
Sung through the world by every honeyed muse;
Wild morning-glories, daisies waving tall,
At every step is something new to choose;
And oft I stop and gaze
Upon the flowery maze;
By yonder cypresses, on that soft rise,
Scarce seen through poppies and the knee-deep wheat,
Juts the dark cleft where on her came the fleet
Thunder-black horses, and the cloud's surprise,
And he who filled the place.
Did marigolds bright as these, gilding the mist,
Drop from her maiden zone? Wert thou last kissed,
Pale hyacinth, last seen, before his face?

O swallow, on the rocked reed warbling long,
Dost thou remember such a morn of May?
There is a chord of silence in thy song,
Deepening the hush on which it dies away.
Ah, flower so pure, so white,
Winnowing the air like light,
Whiter than Phosphor in the golden morn, --
The bright narcissus she was wont to wear,
The star of springtime shining in her hair,
Wasted not thus, immortally forlorn;
Soon will thy soul be ta'en,
While still the bird's song haunts the warmed sky;
With all dead flowers that were thy light shall lie;
Empty the barley-field, and cut the grain.

Oh, whence has silence stolen on all things here,
Where every sight makes music to the eye?
Through all one unison is singing clear;
All sounds, all colors in one rapture die.
More slow, O heart, more slow!
A presence from below
Moves toward the breathing world from that dark deep,
Whereof men fabling tell what no man knows,
By little fires amid the winter snows,
When earth lies stark in her titanic sleep
And doth with cold expire;
He brings thee all, O Maiden, flower of earth,
Her child in whom all nature comes to birth,
Thee, the fruition of all dark desire.

No living eyes have seen him save thine own,
And hence he bore thee to the dark deep under,
Far from the beauty of this heaven-bright zone,
Where the corn ripens in the summer thunder,
And all things throb, and lave
In color's rainbow wave.
Vainly we question things whose home is here:
No rose that ever bloomed, nor herb of grace
Crushed with sweet odors, ever saw his face,
Nor golden lilies laid upon the bier.
Nor only now I ponder
Hunger divine that beauty cannot dull;
Who beauty loves, his soul is beautiful,
The master said, and oft on this I wonder.

O Proserpine, dream not that thou art gone
Far from our loves, half-human, half-divine;
Thou hast a holier adoration won
In many a heart that worships at no shrine.
Where light and warmth behold me,
And flower and wheat enfold me,
I lift a dearer prayer than all prayers past:
He who so loved thee that the live earth clove
Before his pathway unto light and love,
And took thy flower-full bosom, -- who at last
Shall every blossom cull, --
Lover the most of what is most our own,
The mightiest lover that the world has known,
Dark lover, Death, -- was he not beautiful?





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