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Pictures & poems/Proserpina

From Wikisource
Pictures & poems
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Proserpina
1233120Pictures & poems — ProserpinaDante Gabriel Rossetti



Proserpina



PROSERPINA


AFAR away the light that brings cold cheer

Unto this wall,—one instant and no more

Admitted at my distant palace-door.

Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear

Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.

Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey

That chills me: and afar, how far away,

The nights that shall be from the days that were.


Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing

Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:

And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,

(Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring,

Continually together murmuring,)—

"Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!"