"The Garden of Proserpine" is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in Poems and Ballads in 1866. Proserpine is the Latin spelling of Persephone, a goddess married to Hades, god of the underworld. According to some accounts, she had a garden of ever blooming flowers (poppies) in the underworld. The Greek and Roman festivals honoring her and her mother, Ceres, emphasized Proserpine's return to the upper world in spring. According to the myths which talk of Persephone's Pearls, bringing visitors for lonely Persephone, these poppies induce waking sleep if picked and travelers forget their purpose, trapped wandering the underworld until they no longer are touching these flowers. In Swinburne's poems, however, the emphasis is on her role as goddess of death and eternal sleep. There are twelve stanzas in the poem. Each stanza is an "octave stanza" of eight lines, and all of the stanzas have the same internal pattern of rhymes. This rhyme scheme is recognized as a trimeter, with the pattern ABABCCCB, placing stress at the end of the poem where the three Cs rhyme and when Bs rhymes with the start of the poem. The rhyme scheme reflects Algernon Charles Swinburne's emphasis on the last line of each stanza, breaking it up from the rest of the poem, creating a harmonious ring to the feminine ending of each stanza. Diction is another crucial aspect to Swinburne's poem because it conveys the tone and feelings deeper than the writing. In "The Garden of Proserpine", the Victorian Crisis of Faith is an underlying issue that Swinburne uses strong, emphasizing diction and metaphors to convey Proserpine's feelings challenging Christianity and asserting his values of paganism and masochism. Phrases such as "who gathers all things mortal; with cold immortal hands" and "Here life has death for neighbour" are examples of the specific diction used to portray a negative tone toward religion, linking directly to the theme of life and death of the poem, as Proserpine is a symbol of the threshold between life and death. "The Garden of Proserpine" was also written as part of his first series of Poems and Ballads in 1866, depicting the spirit and form of Greek tragedy, including more of his most popular poems such as "Dolores". History "The Garden of Proserpine" brings up various questions commonly accompanying the Crisis of Faith of the Victorian era involving what happens after death. The Crisis of Faith