"Lodged for the night, O Muse! begin To sing the true Sicilian inn, Where the sad choice of six foul cells The least exacting traveller quells (Though crawling things, not yet in sight, Are waiting for the shadowy night, To issue forth when all is quiet, And on your feverish pulses riot;) Where one wood shutter scrapes the ground, By crusts, stale-bones, and garbage bound; Where unmolested spiders toil Behind the mirror's mildew'd foil; Where the cheap crucifix of lead Hangs o'er the iron tressel'd bed; Where the huge bolt will scarcely keep Its promise to confiding sleep, Till you have forced it to its goal In the bored brick-work's crumbling hole; Where, in loose flakes, the white-wash peeling From the bare joints of rotten ceiling, Give token sure of vermin's bower, And swarms of bugs that bide their hour! Though bands of fierce musquittos boom Their threatening bugles round the room, To bed! Ere wingless creatures crawl Across your path from yonder wall, And slipper'd feet unheeding tread We know not what! To bed! to bed! What can those horrid sounds portend? Some waylaid traveller near his end, From ghastly gash in mortal strife, Or blow of bandit's blood-stained knife? No! no! They're bawling to the _Virgin_, Like victim under hands of surgeon! From lamp-lit _daub_, proceeds the cry Of that unearthly litany! And now a train of mules goes by! "One wretch comes whooping up the street For whooping's sake! And now they beat Drum after drum for market mass, Each day's transactions on the _place!_ All things that go, or stay, or come, They herald forth by tuck of drum. Day dawns! a tinkling tuneless bell, Whate'er it be, has news to tell. Then twenty more begin to strike In noisy discord, all alike;-- Convents and churches, chapels, shrines, In quick succession break the lines. Till every gong in town, at last Its tongue hath loos'd, and sleep is past. So much for nights! New days begin, Which land you in another Inn. O! he that means to see _Girgenti_ Or _Syracuse!_--needs patience plenty!"