Hymn to Proserpine

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, who 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 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.