Because Swinburne's "Garden of Proserpine" features Greeco-Roman conceptions of the underworld, I half expected Hades to appear in the poem. Yet Algernon focuses solely on the female ruler of the realm of death. Proserpine is a fertility Goddess who has been denied and the realm of life and man and the landscape of the underworld seems to mirror these qualities. The garden still features plant life but it is all infertile "bloomless buds" and "fruitless fields." The land seems more as if it is stripped of life than as the embodiment of death, and this almost makes it more jarring. Death is also imbued with a sort of seductive quality in the poem, which her femininity serves well. Yet the poem ignores the other half of Proserpine's myth; her resurrection during the summer months. In the final few stanzas the narrator seems to leave the Greeco-Roman realm of the dead altogether and enters a state of "eternal night."
Another aspect of the Greco-Roman tale that was left out of the poem was the role played by Proserpine's mother, Ceres (or Demeter in Greek Mythology). She was the one who caused the death of all things (Winter) when her daughter was sent away to Hades. This was done out of her grief and sadness of not having her daughter with her on Earth. Of course there are many other versions of the tale that might argue otherwise, but I think it was significant that Ceres was left out of the poem. Also, this might be minor, but why did Swinburne choose to use the Roman version of the goddess (Proserpine) instead of the Greek version (Persephone)? Is there a reason for it?
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