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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.