PROEM.
Know ye the land where nature wantons wild,
Where terror wars with beauty for the sway—
The boast of art, and all earth's glory spoil'd
By fate and havoc, since her natal day—
Where mildest skies are lit with quenchless ray,
And Paradise reveals her pride array'd—
Where verdure ever blooms, and breezes play;
Where oft the angel drops the flaming blade,
And hell triumphant reigns o'er trembling man dismay'd!
Where demon tales believ'd the soul perturb'd
Of starting peasant bid in slumber cry,
Where superstition, dark and all uncurb'd,
Lords in the cot and in the palace high;
Where the cowl'd monk his beads tells, roving by
Where sleep the ashes of the chiefs of eld;
Gigantic columns all neglected lie,
And domes that pagan rites whilere beheld,
The chaunt of cloister'd nuns with Mary's name hath fill'd.
Where gleams the poniard in night's trembling beam,
The red-cross oft doth knighthood's fall proclaim—
A cross is always painted on the wall opposite to the spot where a knight has been killed. Hill's Tour in Sicily and Malta.
The slave of love or honour's glittering dream—
While heav'n, indignant, that such deeds of shame,
In land so fair, are link'd with honour's name,
Sends the fell Samum
The Sirocco is called in Sicily the Samum. Hager's Picture of Palermo.
withering every sense,
The red Volcano's never-dying flame
And breath sulphureous—in their impotence,
They dread the deluge wild, earthquakes and pestilence!
O'er her green hills and plains with glory clad,
Mid the dark forests of her giant mound,
Where ruin marches in the vineyard glad
And his dire steps since nature's birth resound,
A rhymer wander'd;—he survey'd each bound,
Till his tir'd eyes in weary slumbers close—
Yet still the mountain's roar re-echo'd round,
Still fleeting visions wake in his repose:
And there this wilder'd dream, yet all connected rose.
