The archetype of the Great Mother, who nurtures and encloses, is symbolised either by the goddess of the underworld or by the sea. In Swinburne's 'Hesperia' the speaker longs to be transported from life into the realm of Proserpine (the goddess of Hesperia, the land of the west, of the happy dead and memories). He imagines himself there: "From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places/Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead" (11. 33-34).
