Hymn to Proserpine

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"Hymn to Proserpine" is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in 1866.

The poem opens with the words Vicisti, Galilæe, Latin for "You have conquered, O Galilean," the apocryphal dying words of the Emperor Julian. He had tried to reverse the official endorsement of Christianity by the Roman Empire. The poem is cast in the form of a lament by a person professing the paganism of classical antiquity and lamenting its passing, and expresses regret at the rise of Christianity:

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;

We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.

The poem is addressed to the goddess Proserpina, the Roman equivalent of Persephone.

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