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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from The Search after Proserpine: Fountain Nymphs

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902)

Extracts from The Search after Proserpine: Fountain Nymphs

1
PROSERPINA was playing

In the soft Sicilian clime,

’Mid a thousand damsels maying,

All budding to their prime:

From their regions azure-blazing

The Immortal Concourse gazing

Bent down, and sought in vain

Another earthly shape so meet with them to reign.

2
The steep blue arch above her,

In Jove’s own smiles arrayed,

Shone mild, and seemed to love her:

His steeds Apollo stayed:

Soon as the God espied her

Nought else he saw beside her,

Though in that happy clime

A thousand maids were verging to the fulness of their prime.

3
Old venerable Ocean

Against the meads uprolled

With ever-young emotion

His tides of blue and gold:

He had called with pomp and pæan

From his well-beloved Ægean

All billows to one shore,

To fawn around her footsteps and in murmurs to adore.

4
Proserpina was playing

Sicilian flowers among;

Amid the tall flowers straying.

Alas! she strayed too long!

Sometimes she bent and kissed them,

Sometimes her hands caressed them,

And sometimes, one by one,

She gathered them and tenderly enclosed them in her zone.

5
Lay upon your lips your fingers—

Ceres comes, and full of woe;

Sad she comes, and often lingers:

Well that grief divine I know:

Lay upon your lips your fingers;

Crush not, as you run, the grass;

Let the little bells of glass

On the fountain blinking

Burst, but ring not till she pass,

Down in silence sinking.

By the green scarf arching o’er her,

By her mantle yellow-pale,

By those blue weeds bent before her,

Bent as in a gale,

Well I know her—hush, descend—

Hither her green-tracked footsteps wend.

*****

Strophe
Proserpina once more

Will come to us a-Maying;

Sicilian meadows o’er

Low-singing and light-playing.

The wintry durance past,

Delight will come at last:

Proserpina will come to us—

Will come to us a-Maying.

Antistrophe
Sullen skies to-day,

Sunny skies to-morrow;

November steals from May,

And May from her doth borrow;

Griefs—Joys—in Time’s strange dance

Interchangeably advance;

The sweetest joys that come to us

Come sweeter for past sorrow.