See, through my cell's late-opened door,
That mile-long line of vaulted dark,
Which drowns the groping sight, before
It gains the solitary spark

Of daylight, that from broad blue skies
And wild free woods has struggled in,
Marking the porch where Pity dies-
Where Hope, the long-reluctant, flies
And leaves the keys to Sin.

Gray monk!-my countless years have pass'd
One straight, curs'd level, black and vast
As that grim gallery, with a ray

Of sunshine on their opening way.

Say thou, who preachest man was sent
Into this God-created world

With high beneficent intent,

Why my unripen'd soul was hurl'd,
Just as it started in the race-

Ere Reason's cup had cool'd my lips-
Ere I could sunder guilt from grace-

Down, down where demons have their place
In Death's unsounded deeps?

One hour was mine of lovely things,
Flowers, waters, forests, glancing wings,
Then sudden night!-and slimy stone,
Shut me and Madness up alone!

They said 'twas Mercy saved me so-
The slaves!-I could but briefly feel
Their bursting mace's ponderous blow,
Stretch'd on the limb-dividing wheel.
I should not then have died the death
Which takes a century to slay,

When whelm'd, enchain'd, and choked beneath
One marble mass, the charnel's breath

Its victim rots away.

I should not then have felt my mind,
From lonely horror scared and blind,
Whirl into savage frenzy's rage,
Like captive tiger round his cage.

Who that had heard me strive to break

With shouts that ceaseless solitude,

Till my faint gasp refused to shriek,

And mine became the Idiot's mood;

When strength of youth and manhood's might To moping, soundless torpor grew,

And the sick undiscerning sight

One blank interminable night

Of burial only knew;

Who then had deem'd the driveller there-
Plough'd by the Avenger's fiery share-
Of love, life, light, once drank his fill,
As the lithe roe-deer drinks the rill?

Yes!-give me back one year of bloom,
And though remorseless was my fall,
And fiercely dire my monstrous doom,
Yet I will face it all!

So once again I may but rove
With HER the fair and evening-eyed-

That thing of radiance and of love-
Sweet Maude, who in the chestnut grove
So prized and perjured died.

Oh! but to watch her on this breast,
Sink like a folded flower to rest
Once-only once-as in that time-
She free from falsehood-I from crime!

The bow of heaven had less of grace
In valley-waters glass'd and bent,—
The very glory of her face
Fresh lustre to creation lent.

This heart with fire was all too full;
By winding brook and mossy stone,
And thunderous wave, and woodland lull,
I loved with her the Beautiful,
And lived for her alone.

I sought one eve our trysting-tree,
The linden bough was budding free,
But wild December stript it bare,
Before again she met me there.

She came at last. I drank the start,
The blush her treacherous cheek betray'd.
Enough-the life-tide of her heart
Was crimson on my blade.

I had a right-who taught her first
Earth's only boon, true love, to know-
When wrong'd in every dream I nurst,
To snatch her from the last, the worst
Of sorrows here below.

Not sweeter went our early hours,
Beneath the happy chesnut flowers,
Than wore that first red night away,
When I and Murder watch'd her clay!

You know the rest-ye felon's friends!-
The sands of hideous grief are run;
Nor tell me, when Earth's thraldom ends,
That Heaven's is but begun.

I dare not deem the creed divine,

That from this parting hour would tear
The trust, that horrors like to mine
May from the Judgment-threshold's shine
The blot of bloodshed wear!

From my life's page, the hand of shame
Swept hope, love, memory, fortune, name.
The rest-Remorse, fear, frenzied woe-
Remember THOU to whom I go!

THE LEGEND OF ST ROSALIE.

BY DELTA.

FAIR art thou, Sicily! in all his round,

Shines not the sun on lovelier land than thine;
With gorgeous olive groves thy hills are crown'd,
And o'er thy vales the pomegranate and vine
Spread rich in beauty; halcyon seas around
Thy shores breathe freshness, making half-divine
An earthly climate; eye hath nowhere seen
Heaven brighter in its blue, earth in its green!

But of these boasts I sing not now-my tale
Is of an ancient pestilence, when the power
Of death hung o'er thee, like a sable veil,
And desolation ruled each awful hour;

When man's heart sank, and woman's cheek grew pale,
And graves were dug in every garden-bower,
And proud Palermo bow'd her spiry head

In silent gloom-a city of the dead!

Hush'd was the voice of traffic on each street;

Within the market-place the grass sprang green; Friends from each other shrank with hasty feet,

When on the porch the plague's red-cross was seen; The clocks had long forgotten to repeat

Time's warning hours; and where had revel been On days of carnival, with wheels of dread The dead-cart roll'd, and homes gave out their dead.

A lurid vapour veil'd the sun from view,

And the winds were not; strangers fled the shore ; Lay in the ports the ship without a crew,

The heat-warp'd fisher-boat and rotting oar;
Wander'd the house-dog masterless, and grew
So fierce with famine, the gaunt looks he wore
Betoken'd madness; broken was each tie
That sweetens life, or links humanity.

Thus week on week crawl'd on, and day by day,
Down to the dreary caverns of the grave,

Pass'd in this harvest-home of death away,

Unmark'd, unmourn'd, the beauteous and the brave, The white-hair'd sire, and infant of a day;

No funeral had a single follower, save

The hirelings who for wine or booty schemed,

And, while they trode the verge of hell, blasphemed;

Till one gray morn, when all was drear and dumb,
Arose, far off, the sound as of a sea,

Or wailing of the wild winds, when they come
To strip the frail leaves from October's tree:
Now nearer-'twas the multitudinous hum

Of human tongues. What could the meaning be?
The timid and the plague-struck left their beds,
And all the roofs were clad with gazing heads!

And lo! a gray-hair'd abbot, in the van

Of a tumultuous, motley, rushing crowd,

Which throng'd around the venerable man,
And scarce a passage for his path allow'd.
Above his head, as if a talisman

Of peace, a long white silken banner flow'd;
Unsandal'd were his feet, his sackcloth vest
And sable cowl, humility confess'd.

And in his calm blue eye a mystery shone,
And on his brow a bright intelligence,
As if his soul to happy worlds had flown,

To carry back some gracious message thence;
Straightway he mounted on a ledge of stone,

'Mid the hush'd crowd glad tidings to dispense,
And stretching forth his thin pale fingers, thus
He spake, in accents clear though tremulous :—

"As in my solitary cell I lay,

On the dried rushes sprinkled for my bed,
A golden light, as if of sudden day,

Around my darken'd walls effulgence shed;
Upon my knees I sprang, in act to pray,

And, earthward as I shrank in solemn dread,
I heard a silver tongue, which thus began-
'Put away fear, and look to me, O man!

"Look up to me-my home is Paradise,
Where all is fadeless, shadowless, and grand,
And groves of amaranth in glory rise,

And streams of silver lave a golden strand,
And angels with their white plumes veil their eyes,
As in the presence of the throne they stand;
Put away fear-to lighten human woe,

Only on messages of love we go.

"Yes! I have come the harbinger of good

From God to man; the tear, the suppliant sigh,
While happy hearths were doom'd to solitude
And silence, have ascended to the sky.
Now by His precious name who died on rood,
Health shall once more revisit Sicily-

Again Palermo take her titles old

The wide world's granary *-the shell of gold.'†

"As music melts within the moonlight sea,
So ceased her voice upon the silent air;
And, looking up, from sudden fear set free,
Behold! a form, angelically fair,

* The wide world's granary. From time immemorial Sicily has been noted for its amazing fertility. It was hence styled "Romani imperii horreum," at a time when the empire of the Cæsars scarcely knew limits. According to Pliny, its fields yielded a hundred fold; and Diodorus, surnamed Siculus, from the island being his birthplace, assumed patriotically that it produced wheat and other grain spontaneously. Brydone, in his spirited and classical Tour, gives it as his opinion, that any of its average harvests is sufficient to supply the whole inhabitants for seven years.

The shell of gold." From the singularity of situation, as well as from the richness of the soil, Palermo has had many flattering epithets bestowed upon it, particu. larly by the poets, who have denominated it Conca d'Oro, the Golden Shell, which is at once expressive both of its situation and richness. It has likewise been called Aurea Vallis, Hortus Siciliæ, &c., and to include all these together, the lasting term of Felix has been added to its name, by which you will find it distinguished in the maps."Brydone's Tour through Sicily and Malta.

In robes cerulean mantled to the knee,

Floating in light-a halo round her hair;
Within her hand she held a branch of palm,
And in her eye dwelt heaven's eternal calm.

"Like honey dripping from the comb, so came
Once more her words-list to me, do not fear-
No vows of wrath I bring, no words of blame,
This world, where now we are, was once my sphere;
And all the feelings of the human frame,

And all man's hopes and joys to me were dear;
Yes! I was once a denizen of earth,

And in the home of princes had my birth.

"Each pleasure for my young heart was devised,
My wishes all were with fruition crown'd,
Yet, girt with earthly grandeur, I despised
The gayety and the giddiness around,
The calm of holy meditation prized,

And, seeking solace in religion, found;
Till wean'd from frailty, in abstraction deep,
I held communion with the blest in sleep.

"And day by day more spiritual I grew,
And night by night more ravishingly blest;
Scarcely it seem'd 'twas human breath I drew,
For angels stood before my sight confest,
And round my walks in circling glory flew,

And shadow'd with their plumes my couch of rest,
Till, by their high communion purified,

The face of man no more I could abide.

"'Twas now my fifteenth summer, and the sun
One morn was shining on the pearly dew,
When, blessing all, yet taking leave of none,
In silence from my palace home I flew—

Flew till my strength was spent, and day was done,
Whither, and for what purpose, scarce I knew,
Nor was it ever guess'd; though, since the last
Hour of my life, five centuries have pass'd.

"Cherubs hung round, an Angel was my guide,
And, mantled in Elysian reverie,

She bore me up the mount, and, at her side,

I woke, o'ershaded by an olive tree ;*

* I woke o'ershaded by an olive tree.-The authority for the olive is, I fear, only poetical, but it is high. Sir Walter Scott, in recounting the wanderings of his Palmer to the holy places of the earth, after mentioning Salem and Rome, and Ararat, and Sinai, and Montserrat, makes mention of

that grot where olives nod,

Where, darling of each heart and eye,
From all the youth of Sicily,

Saint Rosalie retired to God.

MARMION, c. i., st. xxiii.

John Dryden the son of glorious John-in his voyage to Sicily, (p. 107,) as well as Brydone-for they each visited the spot-give a very different account of it. The former calls it "a frightful place, accessible by a very bad, steepy, and break-neck "The mountain is exway." Nor is the description by the latter more favourable.

tremely high," he says, "and so uncommonly steep, that the road up to it is very properly termed la scala, or the stair. Before the discovery of St Rosalia, it was looked upon as almost inaccessible; but they have now, at a vast expense, cut out a road over precipices that were almost perpendicular."