The Departure of Proserpine

Old mother Earth for me already grieves,Her morns wake weeping and her noons are dim,Silence has left her woods, and all the leavesDance in the windy shadows on the rimOf the dull lake thro' which I soon shall passTo my dark bridal bedDown in the hollow chambers of the dead.Will not the thunder hide me if I call,Wrapt in the corner of some distant starThe gods have never known?Alas! alas!My voice has left with the last wing, my fallShall crush the flowery fields with gloom, as farAs swallows fly.Would I might dieAnd in a solitude of roses lieAs the last bud's outblown.Then nevermore Demeter would be heardWail in the blowing rain, but every showerWould come bound up with rainbows to the birdsWrapt in a dusty wing, and the dry flowerHanging a shrivelled lip.This weary change from light to darkness fillsMy heart with twilight, and my brightest dayDawns over thunder and in thunder spillsIts urn of gladnessWith a sadnessThrough which the slow dews dripAnd the bat goes over on a thorny wing.Is it a dream that once I used to singFrom Ægean shores across her rocky isles,Making the bells of Babylon to ringOver the wilesThat lifted me from darkness to the Spring?And the KingSeeing his wine in blossom on the treeDanced with the queen a merry roundelay,And all the blue circumference of the dayWas loud with flying song.———But let me pass along:What brooks it the unfree to thus delay?No secret turning leads from the gods' way.