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| WHOSOE’ER | |
| Had look’d upon the glory of that day | |
| In Sieily beneath the summer sun, | |
| Would not have dream’d that Death was reigning there | |
| In shape so terrible;—for all the road | 5 |
| Was like an avenue of Paradise, | |
| Life, and full flame of loveliness of life. | |
| The red geraniums blaz’d in banks breast-high, | |
| And from the open doors in the white walls | |
| Scents of magnolia and of heliotrope | 10 |
| Came to the street; filmy aurora-flowers | |
| Oper’d and died in the hour, and fell away | |
| In many-color’d showers upon the ground; | |
| Nebulous masses of the pale blue stars | |
| Made light upon the darkness of the green, | 15 |
| Through openings in the thickets over-arch’d; | |
| Where roses, white and yellow and full-rose, | |
| Weigh’d down their branches, till the ground was swept | |
| By roses, and strewn with them, as the air | |
| Shook the thick clusters, and the Indian reeds | 20 |
| Bow’d to its passing with their feathery heads; | |
| And trumpet-blossoms push’d out great white horns | |
| From the green sheath, till all the green was hid | |
| By the white spread of giant-blowing wings. | |
| In the cool shadow heaps of tuberose | 25 |
| Lay by the fountains in the market-place, | |
| Among the purple fruit. The jalousies | |
| Of the tall houses shut against the sun | |
| Were wreath’d with trails of velvet-glossy bells; | |
| And here and there one had not been unclos’d | 30 |
| Yesterday, and the vivid shoots had run | |
| Over it in a night, and seal’d it fast | |
| With tendril, and bright leaf, and drops of flower. | |
| And in and out the balconies thin stems | |
| Went twisting, and the chains of passion-flowers, | 35 |
| Bud, blossom, and phantasmal orb of fruit | |
| Alternate, swung, and lengthen’d every hour. | |
| And fine-leav’d greenery crept from bower to bower | |
| With thick white star-flakes scatter’d; and the bloom | |
| Of orient lilies, and the rainbow-blue | 40 |
| Of iris shot up stately from the grass; | |
| And through the wavering shadows crimson sparks | |
| Pois’d upon brittle stalks, glanced up and down; | |
| And shining darkness of the cypress clos’d | |
| The deep withdrawing glades of evergreen, | 45 |
| Lit up far off with oleander pyres. | |
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| Out of the rocky dust of the wayside | |
| The lamps of the aloes burn’d themselves aloft, | |
| Immortal; and the prickly cactus-knots | |
| In the hot sunshines overleant the walls, | 50 |
| The lizards darting in and out of them; | |
| But in the shadier side the maidenhair | |
| Sprung thick from every crevice. Passing these, | |
| He issued on to the Piazza, where | |
| The wonder o the world, the Fountain streams | 55 |
| From height to height of marble, dashing down | |
| White waves forever over whitest limbs, | |
| That shine in multitudes amid the spray | |
| And sound of silver waters without end, | |
| Rolling and rising and showering suddenly. | 60 |
| There standing where the fig-trees made a shade | |
| Close in the angle, he beheld the streets | |
| Stretch fourways to the beautiful great gates; | |
| With all their burnish’d domes and carven stones | |
| In wavering color’d lines of light and shade. | 65 |
| And downwards, from the greatest of the gates, | |
| Porta Felice, swept the orange-groves; | |
| And avenues of coral-trees led down | |
| In all their hanging splendors to the shore; | |
| And out beyond them, sleeping in the light, | 70 |
| The islands, and the azure of the sea. | |
| And upwards, through a labyrinth of spires, | |
| And turrets, and steep alabaster walls, | |
| The city rose, and broke itself away | |
| Amidst the forests of the hills, and reach’d | 75 |
| The heights of Monreale, crown’d with all | |
| Its pinnacles and all its jewell’d fronts | |
| Shining to seaward;—but the tolling bells | |
| Out of the gilded minarets smote the ear:— | |
| Until at last, through miles of shadowy air, | 80 |
| The blue and violet mountains shut the sky. | |
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