Algernon Charles Swinburne’s, Hymn to Proserpine, talks about the old gods of Greek and Roman culture which defies the Christian faith of his time. Swinburne didn’t seem to follow the Christian faith, it is said that, “in religion he appeared to be a pagan” (Greenblatt p.571). The poem starts off with the male speaker calling out to Proserpine; “I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end; / Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend” (Greenblatt p.572). The Roman Goddess Proserpine is the wife of Pluto (king of the underworld), making her queen of the underworld and in this poem, she is referred to be the goddess of death and sleep (Greenblatt p.573). In his resistance to Christian faith, the male speaker calls out for Proserpine to befriend him, seeming to long eternal sleep with them. “New gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods; / They are merciful, clothes with pity, the young compassionate gods” (Greenblatt p.573). The old gods have been dethroned, forgotten, replaced, and their ways along with them. The old gods were “cruel as love or life, and lovely as death” (Greenblatt p.573) and in the description the male speaker gave, it is clear that he does not prefer the merciful, compassionate, and “clothed with pity” gods, but rather the old order of the pagan gods. The freedom the speaker finds with the pagan gods was a sweet bliss compared to the new gods ways.
Something interesting I found about the poem is that the male speaker never addresses the new gods or Christians savior by their name. He refers to the savior as “Galilean” because Jesus grew up in Galilee (Greenblatt p.573). Names hold power and I think in the speaker not saying the names of the new gods and savior, he is denying giving them power. This could be further read into as the speaker not giving society power over him. The male speaker questions Galilean in frustration in all that he has taken from the old gods. Questioning Galilean is the speaker questioning the beliefs of the society he is in and showing the frustration he has with his society. “We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death” (Greenblatt p.573). People in society have forgotten norms that once were (Lethean is to forget) and the speaker wants people to be aware that they have forgotten. People forgot that they used to have different sexual norms in the Greek Culture. “Though before thee the Cytherean [Venus] be fallen, and hidden her head/…. And wonderous waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways” (Greenblatt p.575). Venus is known to be the goddess of love, passion, and pleasure and so I found it interesting that she was in this poem. When looking at Greek culture, men were allowed to be curious with their sexuality. Venus is said to be viewless or unopinionated when it came to passion and pleasure and the speaker wanted this to be known. The speaker is pagan and is already braking societal norms and he wants to break more with his sexuality, a touchy subject for Victorians. It is said that, “Swinburne loved Greece as a land if liberty in which men has expressed themselves with the fewest restraints” (Greenblatt p.572). Swinburne wanted to get people talking about this topic and to have the society norms questioned. The Christian faith has stolen the norms of the past and replaced them, taking away the freedom men had to express themselves with minimal restraints.
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