Proserpina

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 weep

For these give joy and sorrow

But thou, Proserpina, sleep

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 roar

And her face with the foam of the tides

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

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 weeping

A slave among slaves, and rejected

But she came flushed from the full-flushed wave

And imperial, her foot on the sea

In the night where thine eyes are as moons

In heaven, the night where thou art

Where the silence is more than all tunes

Where sleep overflows from the heart

Therefore now at thy feet I abide

For a season in silence

I know I shall die as my fathers died

And sleep as they sleep; even so

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