Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)

Song of the Stygian Naiades

PROSERPINE may pull her flowers,

Wet with dew or wet with tears,

Red with anger, pale with fears,

Is it any fault of ours,

If Pluto be an amorous king,

And comes home nightly, laden,

Underneath his broad bat-wing,

With a gentle, mortal maiden?

Is it so, Wind, is it so?

All that you and I do know

Is, that we saw fly and fix

’Mongst the reeds and flowers of Styx,

Yesterday,

Where the Furies made their hay

For a bed of tiger-cubs,

A great fly of Beelzebub’s,

The bee of hearts, whom mortals name

Cupid, Love, and Fie for shame.

Proserpine may weep in rage,

But, ere you and I have done

Kissing, bathing in the sun,

What I have in yonder cage,

Bird or serpent, wild or tame,

She shall guess, and ask in vain;

But, if Pluto does’t again,

It shall sing out loud his shame.

What hast caught then? What hast caught?

Nothing but a poet’s thought,