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A Hymn to Persephone
Black Mother Night, your children are
Sleep, Love, Dreams,
the
Moirai, Nemesis,
Old Age and Death.
You dwell deep in Earth beyond the dismal gates
that seperate the living
from the dead.
Golden daughter of Demeter
and Zeus, wife of Haides, beautiful avenger,
mother of the Erinyes,
mother of Dionysos,
You were a virgin walking in a field
when Haides saw you
and took you away in his black chariot.
Your
mother searched everywhere for you.
She found you in the Underworld.
Persephone, because you ate pomegranate seeds
at the table of Haides
Zeus decreed you spend six months every year underground. We call it winter.
When you return
to wander smiling
in fields of sweet grass your footsteps and voice awaken spring.
We know you in bursting pomegranates,
laughing
children and nodding flowers: roses, violets,
crocuses, irises, hyakinths, anemones, daughters of the wind.
Under
the black poplar and white willow you whisper secrets
of shade without sound and coming out to light.
Persephone
of the beautiful ankles and aspen hair,
you are the star in the apple.
Autumn wed, giver of life and death, we honor
you.
Give us rich increase, healthy crops and precious peace.
From your gentle hand let fall health and joy.
Free
us from bleak strife. When we stand before death
send us willing to the essence from which we came.
Welcome us in
your splendid palace.
Let us play in your beautiful fields.
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Orphic Hymn to Persephone
Persephone, Daughter of Zeus, blessed
Only begotten, gracious Goddess,
receive this good offering,
Much honoured, you, overpowered by Pluto, you are beloved and lifegiving,
You hold the doors
of Hades under the depths of the earth;
Transactor of Justice, your beloved hair the sacred olive branch of the enemy
Mother
of the Eumenides, Queen of the Underworld, You, maiden from Zeus through secret begetting.
Mother of loud-shouting, many-shaped Bacchus.
Playmate of the moving seasons,
lightbringing, of beautiful form,
Holy, ruler of all, maiden, showering fruits,
Radiant, horned, you alone are longed
for by mortals.
You are Spring, delighting in fragrant meadows
Your sacred body appears to us in growing fruits and
branches.
Raped into your marriage bed in the late autumn
You alone are life and
death to distressed mortals.
Persephone. You are forever the nourisher and the death bringer.
Listen, blessed Goddess and send up fruits from the earth
In peace, flourishing
in health from your soothing hand;
And, in life abundance, leading to richness of old age
Then to your realm O Sovereign,
and to powerful Pluto.
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