Pictures & poems/Proserpina

by Dante 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!"