Typesetting tables in LaTeX

[Alexander Darovsky]

        Hello everybody.
I've seen \multicolumn command in \tabular environment,
but how can I typeset a table described with the following 
HTML code?
<table>
<tr><td rowspan=3>long vertical<td>item1
<tr><td>item2
<tr><td>item3
<tr><td>item4<td>item5
</table>?
There's no any \multirow or spanning.
The only desision I see is using multiple columns, but
do not draw horisontal part of the line, but it goes well
only until "long vertical" fits in one line...
        Regards and hope on help, Alexander.