See, through my cell's late-opened door, Of daylight, that from broad blue skies Gray monk!-my countless years have pass'd Of sunshine on their opening way. Say thou, who preachest man was sent With high beneficent intent, Why my unripen'd soul was hurl'd, Ere Reason's cup had cool'd my lips- Down, down where demons have their place One hour was mine of lovely things, They said 'twas Mercy saved me so- When whelm'd, enchain'd, and choked beneath Its victim rots away. I should not then have felt my mind, 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- Yes!-give me back one year of bloom, So once again I may but rove That thing of radiance and of love- Oh! but to watch her on this breast, The bow of heaven had less of grace This heart with fire was all too full; I sought one eve our trysting-tree, She came at last. I drank the start, I had a right-who taught her first Not sweeter went our early hours, You know the rest-ye felon's friends!- I dare not deem the creed divine, That from this parting hour would tear From my life's page, the hand of shame THE LEGEND OF ST ROSALIE. BY DELTA. FAIR art thou, Sicily! in all his round, Shines not the sun on lovelier land than thine; But of these boasts I sing not now-my tale When man's heart sank, and woman's cheek grew pale, 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; Thus week on week crawl'd on, and day by day, 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, Or wailing of the wild winds, when they come Of human tongues. What could the meaning be? And lo! a gray-hair'd abbot, in the van Of a tumultuous, motley, rushing crowd, Which throng'd around the venerable man, Of peace, a long white silken banner flow'd; And in his calm blue eye a mystery shone, To carry back some gracious message thence; 'Mid the hush'd crowd glad tidings to dispense, "As in my solitary cell I lay, On the dried rushes sprinkled for my bed, Around my darken'd walls effulgence shed; And, earthward as I shrank in solemn dread, "Look up to me-my home is Paradise, And streams of silver lave a golden strand, Only on messages of love we go. "Yes! I have come the harbinger of good From God to man; the tear, the suppliant sigh, Again Palermo take her titles old The wide world's granary *-the shell of gold.'† "As music melts within the moonlight sea, * 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; "Like honey dripping from the comb, so came And all man's hopes and joys to me were dear; And in the home of princes had my birth. "Each pleasure for my young heart was devised, And, seeking solace in religion, found; "And day by day more spiritual I grew, And shadow'd with their plumes my couch of rest, The face of man no more I could abide. "'Twas now my fifteenth summer, and the sun Flew till my strength was spent, and day was done, "Cherubs hung round, an Angel was my guide, 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, 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." |