THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE

Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dream of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers,
And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.

No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes,
Save this whereout she crushes

For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number,

In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated

Comes out of darkness morn.

Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,

Crowned with calm leaves, she stands

Who gathers all things mortal

With cold immortal hands;

Her languid lips are sweeter

Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,

She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,

The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;

Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful

Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be

That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal

In an eternal night.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

The careful reader has noticed the system of rime which binds the lines of the above poem into groups of eight, riming ababcccb. The b-rimes, like the rimes previously considered, involve but one syllable, while the aand the c-rimes involve two. For the sake of a convenient terminology, rimes involving one syllable are called masculine; those involving two or three, feminine. Equally useful, but somewhat less frequently employed, terms are single, double, and triple. An approximate rime, like that of river and never in the next to the last stanza is tolerated occasionally by custom in cases where suitable riming words are not easily found. The unaccented syllable at the end of a feminine rime-word in an ascending meter is, as has been stated, not considered a foot. The lines

and

ac ax ax a | x For reaping folk and sowing

ac a | x a | x a
A sleepy world of streams.

are both iambic trimeters. Lines of ascending meter possessing this extra final syllable are termed hypercatalectic.

The first line of the second stanza of the above poem should be marked

x Ꮖ a | x ax a x

I am tired of tears and laughter.

The anapest is sometimes found as a substitute for the iambus, especially, as here, in the first foot of a line.

The poetic device alliteration, the use of a succession

of words with the same initial consonant, is nowhere better illustrated than in stanzas like the one beginning

Pale, beyond porch and portal.

Alliteration is usually confined to accented words, but Swinburne's fondness for the alliterative style led him to use it also in unaccented syllables:

Wan waves and wet winds labour,

term should be used cautiously, for it is also applied to a type of rime, exceedingly rare, exhibited in this stanza from Alfred Noyes's "Astrid”:

White-armed Astrid,-ah, but she was beautiful!Nightly wandered weeping thro' the ferns in the moon, Slowly, weaving her strange garland in the forest, Crowned with white violets,

Gowned in green.

Holy was that glen where she glided,

Making her wild garland as Merlin had bidden her,

Breaking off the milk-white horns of the honey-suckle, Sweetly dripped the dew upon her small white

Feet.

Often associated with the term alliteration is the term assonance, which is used to describe one type of imperfect approximate rime. The vowel sound must be the same, but the concluding consonants are different, as in gnomebold or beaux-roll. Rimes of this type were seen in early modern English poetry, are found in Spanish, but in recent English poetry are usually a sign of slovenly workmanship. George Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and a