"Hymn to Proserpine" is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in 1866. The poem is addressed to the goddess Proserpina, the Roman equivalent of Persephone.
The epigraph at the beginning of the poem is the phrase Vicisti, Galilaee, Latin for "You have conquered, O Galilean", the apocryphal dying words of the Emperor Julian. He had tried to reverse the official endorsement of Christianity by the Roman Empire. The poem is cast in the form of a lament by a person professing the paganism of classical antiquity and lamenting its passing, and expresses regret at the rise of Christianity. Lines 35 and 36 express this best
:
- 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.
The line "Time and the Gods are at strife" inspired the title of Lord Dunsany's Time and the Gods.
The poem is quoted by Sue Bridehead in Thomas Hardy's 1895 novel, Jude the Obscure and also by Edward Ashburnham in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier.
Famous quotes containing the words hymn and/or proserpine:
“The starting point of the human and the end,
That in which space itself is contained, the gate
To the enclosure, day, the things illumined
By day, night and that which night illumines,
Night and its midnight-minting fragrances,
Night’s hymn of the rock, as in a vivid sleep.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“When
Sir
Beelzebub called for his syllabub in the hotel in Hell
Where Proserpine first fell,”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)