IN THE ISLAND OF SICILY .

Sweet land of Muses! o'er whose favour'd plains
 Ceres and Flora held alternate sway;
By Jove refresh'd with life-diffusing rains,
 By Phœbus blest with every kinder ray.

O with what pride do I those times survey,
 When Freedom, by her rustic minstrels led,
Danc'd on the green lawn many a summer's day,
 While pastoral ease reclin'd her careless head.

In these soft shades: ere yet that shepherd fled,
 Whose music pierc'd earth, air, and heav'n, and hell,
And call'd the ruthless tyrant of the dead
 From the dark slumbers of his iron cell.

His ear unfolding caught the magic spell:
 He felt the sounds glide softly through his heart;
The sounds that deign'd of Love's sweet power to tell;
 And, as they told, would point his golden dart.

Fix'd was the god; nor power had he to part,
 For the fair daughter of the sheaf-crown'd queen,
Fair without pride, and lovely without art,
 Gather'd her wild flowers on the daisied green.

He saw, he sigh'd; and that unmelting breast,
Which arms the hand of death, the power of love confest.