The Abduction of Persephone

I sing the fields, Calliope

That mud-clad Demeter
And black-haired Persephone
Ran through as mother and daughter
Now black haired persephone
Dancing with luminous skin and breast
Snared the eyes of Hades
Cold god of the underworld
Hades, Calliope, Hades
The dark one,
brother to Zeus
And keeper of the dead
And he, so great his passion
For black haired Persephone
Twirling among the vines
With shining skin and body
That Hades, the cold one
Rent the hard earth apart
Beneath lustruous Persephone
While Demeter was away
Persephone cried out
As hades from his chariot
seized her of the Black hair

And dragged her past his cold river

Mud clad Demeter
Found no daughter
Dancing in the yellow fields
When she returned
Mother in vine-grip sorrow
Wept and the resounding tears
Fell to earth
From Demeter's flashing eyes
The sorrow of grain's mistress
Was such that the cold ground
Vowed never to bear
While Mud-clad Demeter wept

Demeter, the goddess of the crops and harvest, and Zeus, the king of the gods, had a
daughter, Persephone. One day while Persephone was gathering wild flowers she was
abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld where the dead live.
Distraught when she cold not find her daughter, Demeter wandered over the face of the
earth trying to find out what had happened to her. She came to Eleusis disguised as an
old woman, and was taken in by the king and queen to be the nurse for their son.
Each night, while the palace slept, she placed the baby prince in the fire. One night the
queen peeked and saw what the goddess was doing. Not unnaturally she snatched the
baby out of the fire, and had hysterics. The goddess revealed who she really was and
informed the queen that if she had not interfered, the baby would have been made
immortal, all the mortal parts of him having been burned away.
Demeter met Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, who told her that she had heard
Persephone calling out one day, and suggested she ask Helios, the Sun, if he had seen

what had happened in his daily course across the sky. Helios told Demeter who had
abducted her daughter, and Demeter went off to complain to Zeus, who was not only
Persephone's father but Demeter and Hades' brother. Zeus refused to intervene, so
Demeter withdrew from her role as goddess. Without her no crops could grow, and the
resulting famine threatened the extinction of the human race.
Eventually Zeus said that Hades would have to let Persephone go.
When Persephone was reunited with her mother, Demeter asked if she had eaten
anything while she was in the underworld. Persephone admitted she had eaten a
pomegranate seed. Because of this, she now spends one-third of each year in the
underworld as the wife of Hades, and two-thirds of the year with her mother. While
Persephone is in the underworld, her mother mourns and refuses to allow crops to grow
until she gets her daughter back again.
This myth obviously explains the yearly cycle of growth, harvest, and winter. The version
of the myth found in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter also gives an explanation for some
of the details of the mystery religion of Demeter. Another more literary version of the
myth can be found in Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 5, lines 341-572 where the
characters have Latin names rather than Greek (Demeter = Ceres, Zeus = Jupiter,
Persephone = Proserpina, Hades = Pluto).