A Sicilian Story :: :: University of Virginia Library

—It was a dreary place. The shallow brook
That ran throughout the wood, there took a turn
And widened: all its music died away,
And in the place a silent eddy told
That there the stream grew deeper. There dark trees
Funereal (cypress, yew, and shadowy pine,
And spicy cedar,) clustered, and at night
Shook from their melancholy branches sounds
And sighs like death: 'twas strange, for thro' the day
They stood quite motionless, and looked methought
Like monumental things, which the sad earth
From its green bosom had cast out in pity,
To mark a young girl's grave. The very leaves
Disown'd their natural green, and took a black
And mournful hue: and the rough brier, stretching

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His straggling arms across the rivulet,
Lay like an armed sentinel there, catching
With his tenacious leaf, straws, withered boughs,
Moss that the banks had lost, coarse grasses which
Swam with the current, and with these it hid
The poor Marcelia's death-bed. — Never may net
Of venturous fisher be cast in with hope,
For not a fish abides there. The slim deer
Snorts as he ruffles with his shorten'd breath
The brook, and panting flies the unholy place,
And the white heifer lows and passes on;
The foaming hound laps not, and winter birds
Go higher up the stream. And yet I love
To loiter there: and when the rising moon
Flames down the avenue of pines, and looks
Red and dilated thro' the evening mists,
And chequered as the heavy branches sway
To and fro' with the wind, I stay to listen,
And fancy to myself that a sad voice,
Praying, comes moaning thro' the leaves, as 'twere
For some misdeed. The story goes that some
Neglected girl (an Orphan, whom the world
Frown'd upon) once stray'd thither, and 'twas thought
Cast herself in the stream: You may have heard
Of one Marcelia, poor Molini's daughter, who

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Fell ill and came to want? No?—oh she lov'd
A wealthy man who mark'd her not. He wed,
And then the girl grew sick and pined away
And drown'd herself for love. Some day or other
I'll tell you all the story.