Cupid’s arrow ill aimed, Hades’ heart he did maim,

With a name and without a sound,

His heart now undone by a lady so young,

He watched her from underground.

 

The Underworld deep, the living asleep,

Hades conceived a thought.

To Zeus he spoke, betrayal awoke,

Together they schemed a plot.

 

Twas Zeus’ own daughter in light and in water

He sold to his lonely brother

Demeter unknowing, wind still blowing

The flowers the only others.

 

In light she walks and to roses she talks,

Under the sun she would soon forsake.

She wandered too far, on the earth a new scar,

Was the flower Zeus did make.

 

It’s perfume delightful but ever spiteful,

Persephone’s interest it did tempt.

The sky the only witness, the flowers did grimace

At the sign of Hades’ contempt.

 

The flower she did pluck that Hades had snuck

Not knowing what she had done.

From the earth Hades’ carriage of evil and carnage

Took the girl where there is no sun.

 

The sun she so loved too far and above,

She sat on her cold throne.

He told her he loved her, though she longed for her mother,

Back on the earth where light shone.

 

Were it not for the deed of the pomegranate seed,

Persephone may have returned

But from the land of the dead, the poor girl fed

And what that meant she had not learned.

 

Her mother Ceres crossed the forests and seas,

Walking the earth alone

Her grief all consuming, her soul inside fuming

The land became a winter’s bone.

 

No longer trying, the mortals were dying

Until someone told her of her child’s plight.

The fruitless fields moved Zeus to yield

To Demeter's undying might.

 

To her, he said,

“Our sweet daughter now belongs to our brother,

To Lord of the Underworld she is wed.

What had been done was seen by naught but I and the sun

And Persephone is now Queen of the Dead.”

 

“I beg you return her to me,” she plead, “Set our child free

And I vow no more mortals shall die,

I only wish to see her face, and share a long longed for embrace

And I will forgive that you did lie.”

 

Mother and daughter together again, Hades to his sister he did lend,

The sun shone ever bright.

The crops regained, the warmth remained,

But the end had not befallen their plight.

 

“My daughter,” she said by the soft river bed,

“Tell me something, pray tell,

Have you et of the victuals by the dead’s somber rituals

In the dark land where you fell?”

 

“Mother,” she did cry, for she could not lie,

“I ate in the land of the dead.

For I did not know that I could not go

Back up to the living again.”

 

More sorrow reigned, joy could not be feigned

Persephone had to return

To her dark love not from above

And this her mother did spurn.

 

Hades’ heart made tender, to her wishes he did render

When he saw the heartbreak of his wife.

So they made a deal to all the gods’ appeal

That would bury Demeter’s strife.

 

“For two seasons,” he said without treason,

“May Persephone walk above,

For the others that pass I simply ask

She will come back for me to love.”

 

And so it came to pass, peace had come at last,

That Demeter would wait in Winter and Spring

For her sweet daughters face without the black veil of lace

When she would leave her dark King.

 

In Summer and Fall, to her mother she would call

And they would sit among the flowers

While her husband did wait at the iron gate

Beneath the earth’s heavy bower.