The Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir :: :: University of Virginia Library

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!

II

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!

III

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.

IV

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.

V

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 trod the verge of Hell, blasphemed;

VI

Till one grey 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!

VII

And lo! a grey-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.

VIII

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:—

IX

“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!

X

“‘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.

XI

“‘Yes! I am 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

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 hundredfold; 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, particularly 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.

XII

“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,
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.

XIII

“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.

XIV

“‘Each pleasure for my young heart was devised,
My wishes all were with fruition crown'd,
Yet, girt with earthly grandeur, I despised
The gaiety and the giddiness around,
The calm of holy meditation prized,
And seeking solace in religion, found;
Till wean'd from frality, in abstraction deep,
I held communion with the blest in sleep.

XV

“‘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.

XVI

“‘'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.

XVII

“‘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'ershadowed 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, Canto I. st. xxiii.

John Dryden—the son of glorious John—in his voyage to Sicily, (p. 107,) and 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 way.” Nor is the description by the latter more favourable. “The mountain is extremely 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.”

There was I stationed thenceforth to abide,
Till time from earth should set my spirit free;
And so, amid the rocks, by foot untrod,
I learn'd to live with nature, and to God.

XVIII

“‘My home was Pelegrino's rocky cell;
The berries of the mountain were my food;
My drink was water from its bubbling well;
My only friends the wild birds of the wood;
Yet found I there a peace, which may not dwell
With man below, except in solitude,
When life's one purpose is to fast and pray;
And with my knees I wore the rock away.

XIX

“‘Celestial minds, believe me, for the woes
Of mortal life have sympathy, and I
To hush Palermo's wailings to repose,
Now bring thee down a message from on high;
Hearken to what I bid thee—and the rose
Of health again shall bloom, the plague shall fly:—
For it is granted me, by Heavenly grace,
To be the guardian of my native place.

XX

“‘Girt with that holy faith which falters not,
Go thou with morning, and, from out the stones,
Which strew the floors of Pelegrino's Grot,
Gather together my unburied bones—

Brydone scandalises the memory of the good old Abbot, by alluding to the proverb, that “those who hide are the readiest to find,” and that probably the bones of Rosalie were not her bones at all. We cannot countenance such shocking scepticism, more especially as the “tourist and traveller” gives us no other proof of imposition than his mere ipse dixit. He thinks that “the holy man probably could have given a very good account” of the relics found in the grot, and that likely they were as little entitled to honour as those of St Viar, which were found somewhere in Spain under a broken tombstone, when these were the only legible letters. They were discovered by some priests to have an excellent knack at working miracles, from which considerable revenues were drawn; till, unfortunately, these made application to Pope Leo the Tenth to grant some immunities. His Holiness not being entirely satisfied with the saintship, a list of the miracles was sent to him, together with the broken tombstone. The first were sustained as genuine, but the latter having been proved to be part of a monument erected over a Roman præfectus viarum, the name of poor St Viar was ordered to be struck out of the Calendar. As the best proof that this is no proof at all, St Rosalia still remains there.

For since my own, a human voice hath not
Broken its calm with penitential moans—
Bear them, with anthems to the Prince of Peace,
Thrice round the city, and the plague shall cease.

XXI

“‘And then shall pass away the brooding gloom,
Which hid the very face of heaven from view;
Nature once more her course shall reassume,
The fields their verdure, and the sky its blue;
And Faith shall sit upon the sealed-up tomb;
And Time o'er Sorrow shed her healing dew;
And Hope present, in better worlds restored,
The loved—the quickly lost—and long deplored.’

In the Sicilian language is an epic poem, of which St Rosalia is the heroine. The author at once sets her above all saints save the Virgin, whom he hardly excepts. From his work it appears that our heroine was niece to King William the Good—that she early displayed symptoms of sanctity, and, at fifteen, disclaimed all human society. Retiring to the mountains westward of Palermo, she was never more heard of for five hundred years. Her disappearance being in the year 1159, she was supposed to have been taken up to Heaven, till her bones were discovered in 1624, during a dreadful plague that devastated the island. These were found lying in a cave near the summit of the Monte Pelegrino, by a holy man who was led to them by a Heavenly vision, and told that, by carrying them thrice round the walls of Palermo, the pestilence would be stayed. So was it done—and St Rosalia became the greatest saint in the Calendar.

XXII

“With downcast earnestness my listening ear
Drank in the sounds celestial; as they ceased
I raised mine eyes, in reverential fear,
To gaze upon the Heavenly guest, well pleased;
But she had vanish'd, and the darkness drear
From her abstracted lustre had increased;
And on my couch, within my cell of stone,
Awe-struck I knelt, in darkness and alone!”

XXIII

Silently, breathlessly, around him stood,
Like men escaped from some tremendous doom
By miracle, the innumerous multitude;
Mid-day had broken upon midnight's gloom;
While, as Despair departed with her brood
Accursed, came Hope each pale face to illume;
And, as the abbot ceased, a long loud shout,
Like thunder, rang Palermo's bounds throughout.

XXIV

Again, and yet again, that sea of sound
Surged up to heaven, and then the joyous crowd,
With leap, and lock'd embrace, and sudden bound,
Each other hail'd, in gratulation proud;
While some in speechless ecstasy were drown'd,
Others, o'ercome by feeling, wept aloud;
But onward to the mountain, as behoved,
All in one wild delirious tumult moved.

XXV

Up Pelegrino's rocky sides they clomb,
The old man in the midst, and there, on high,
They found the fair Saint's dwelling-place and tomb—
A yawning cleft that faced the eastern sky;
Entering, 'twas mantled all in twilight gloom;
Which clearing up, 'twas rapture to descry
Upon its floor, amid the rugged stones,
The treasure which they sought for—mouldering bones—

XXVI

The mouldering bones of sainted Rosalie,
Which there, unnoticed and unknown, had lain,
While spring, through centuries five, had green'd the tree,
And autumn burden'd earth with golden grain;
As they were borne to light, each bent the knee,
Then downwards follow'd to the dim-seen plain
In reverential silence—for the time
Was solemn, and gave birth to thoughts sublime.

XXVII

Thus, from her trance of darkness, into day
Palermo broke; the bells from every tower
Peal'd joyously; and bands, with streamers gay,
Assembling, waited anxiously the hour
Which was to chase the pestilence away,
And from its dreaded and destructive power
Release a suffering city, and restore
To vacant homes the household gods once more.

XXVIII

Then, as the vision bade, with chanted hymn,
Thrice round the city march'd they on that morn,
With censers in the daylight burning dim,
And the loud sound of timbrel, harp, and horn;
All eyes were on the abbot, for by him
The relics in a silver urn were borne;

This urn was deposited in the Chapel of St Rosalia, the most magnificent of the many which compose the Madre Chiesa, or Cathedral of Palermo. It is curiously wrought, and enriched with precious stones. These relics perform many miracles, and are looked upon as the greatest treasure appertaining to the city.

Behind him paced the vestals, vow'd to God,
And freres with robes of white, and feet unshod.

XXIX

Meanwhile the vapours, dense and stern, away
From the blue concave of the sky withdrew;
Burst forth in radiant loveliness the day,
And stirring all the leaves the light winds blew;
Gamboll'd the flocks; the wild birds caroll'd gay;
Almost it seem'd that nature breathed anew,
And had thrown off the spell, which made her seem
As if bewitch'd by some night-mareish dream.

XXX

Again the tide of life went rolling on,
And mingling tongues were heard, and hurrying feet;
The clocks again gave out a cheerful tone;
Back to the empty harbours came the fleet;
With corn the long-deserted fields were sown;
And traffic swept the grass from off the street;
Joy re-illumin'd ocean, and its shore;
And man met man in brotherhood once more.

XXXI

In season due, by grateful hands uprear'd,
On Pelegrino's rugged cliffs a fane,

“This chapel is very richly adorned; and on the spot where the Saint's body was discovered, which is just beneath the hole in the rock, which is opened on purpose, as I said, there is a very fine statue of marble, representing her in a lying posture, railed in all about with fine iron and brass work; and the altar, on which they say mass, is built just over it.”— Dryden's Voyage.

Rich in its architectural grace, appear'd,
Over the grotto, where so long had lain
The bones of Rosalie—her name revered
May find in Sicily no like again,
For ever to shine forth the brightest star
In her peculiar Calendar by far.

XXXII

And yearly on that day, when from the powers
Of pestilence Palermo's walls were freed,
The people give to revelry the hours,
And kneel before her imaged form, and feed
The path of her triumphal car with flowers.
Such of a grateful nation is the meed,
Paid for the blasting of Plague's upas-tree,
And such its reverence for St Rosalie!