Till late this bonny maiden I saw,
As spotless as the morning snaw.
Full twenty years she has lived as free
As the spirits that sojourn in this countrye.
I have brought her away frae the snares of
That sin or death she may never ken."
They clasped her waist and her hands sae fair; They kissed her cheek, and they kemed her hair;
And round came many a blooming fere,
Saying, "Bonny Kilmeny, ye're welcome here;
Women are freed of the littand scorn;
Oh, blest be the day Kilmeny was born!
Now shall the land of the spirits see,
Now shall it ken, what a woman may be!
Many a lang year in sorrow and pain,
Many a lang year through the world we've
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And the angels will weep at the day of doom!
"Oh, would the fairest of mortal kind
Aye keep the holy truths in mind,
That kindred spirits their motions see,
Who watch their ways with anxious ee,
And grieve for the guilt of humanitye!
Oh, sweet to heaven the maiden's prayer,
And the sigh that heaves a bosom sae fair!
And dear to heaven the words of truth
And the praise of virtue frae beauty's mouth!
And dear to the viewless forms of air,
The minds that kythe as the body fair!
"O, bonny Kilmeny! free frae stain,
If ever you seek the world again—
That world of sin, of sorrow and fear-
Oh, tell of the joys that are waiting here;
And tell of the signs you shall shortly see;
Of the times that are now, and the times that
shall be."-
They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away,
And she walked in the light of a sunless day
The sky was a dome of crystal bright,
The fountain of vision, and fountain of light;
The emerald fields were of dazzling glow,
And the flowers of everlasting blow.
Then deep in the stream her body they laid,
That her youth and beauty never might face;
And they smiled on heaven, when they saw
her lie
In the stream of life that wandered by.
She kend not where; but sae sweetly it rung.
And she heard a song-she heard it sung,
It fell on her ear like a dream of the morn-
"Oh! blest be the day Kilmeny was born!
Now shall the land of the spirits see,
Now shall it ken, what a woman may be!
The sun that shines on the world sae bright,
A borrowed gleid frae the fountain of light;
And the moon that sleeks the sky sae dun,
Like a gouden bow, or a beamless sun-
Shall wear away, and be seen nae mair;
And the angels shall miss them, travelling
But lang, lang after baith night and day, When the sun and the world have dyed
When the sinner has gane to his waesome doom,
Kilmeny shall smile in eternal bloom!"...
They bore her away, she wist not how,
For she felt not arm nor rest below;
But so swift they wained her through the
light,
'T was like the motion of sound or sight;
They seemed to split the gales of air,
And yet nor gale nor breeze was there.
Unnumbered groves below them grew;
They came, they past, and backward flew,
Like floods of blossoms gliding on,
In moment seen, in moment gone.
Oh, never vales to mortal view
Appeared like those o'er which they flew
That land to human spirits given,
The lowermost vales of the storied heaven:
From whence they can view the world below,
And heaven's blue gates with sapphires
More glory yet unmeet to know.
They bore her far to a mountain green, To see what mortal never had seen; And they seated her high on a purple sward, And bade her heed what she saw and heard, And note the changes the spirits wrought; For now she lived in the land of thought.— She looked, and she saw nor sun nor skies, But a crystal dome of a thousand dies; She looked, and she saw nae land aright, But an endless whirl of glory and light; And radiant beings went and came, Far swifter than wind, or the linked flame; She hid her een frae the dazzling view; She looked again, and the scene was new.
She saw a sun on a summer sky,
And clouds of amber sailing by;
A lovely land beneath her lay,
And that land had glens and mountains gray;
And that land had valleys and hoary piles,
And marled seas, and a thousand isles;
Its fields were speckled, its forests green,
And its lakes were all of the dazzling sheen,
Like magic mirrors, where slumbering lay
The sun and the sky and the cloudlet gray,
Which heaved and trembled, and gently
On every shore they seemed to be hung;
And a leifu' maiden stood at her knee, With a silver wand and melting eeHer sovereign shield, till love stole in, And poisoned all the fount within.
And, weening his head was danger-preef
When crowned with the rose and clover leaf,
He growled at the carle, and chased hi
away
For there they were seen on their downward To feed wi' the deer on the mountain gray.
A thousand times and a thousand again;
In winding lake and placid firth—
Little peaceful heavens in the bosom
Kilmeny sighed and seemed to grieve, For she found her heart to that land cleave;
He growled at the carle, and he gecked at
But his mark was set, and his arles given of Kilmeny a while her een withdrew;
She saw the corn wave on the vale;
She saw the deer run down the dale;
She saw the plaid and the broad claymore,
And the brows that the badge of freedom
bore;
And she thought she had seen the land before.
She saw a lady sit on a throne, The fairest that ever the sun shone on! A lion licked her hand of milk, And she held him in a leish of silk,
She looked again, and the scene was new.
She saw below her, fair unfurled,
One half of all the glowing world,
Where oceans rolled and rivers ran,
To bound the aims of sinful man.
She saw a people fierce and fell,
Burst frae their bounds like fiends of hell;
There lilies grew, and the eagle flew;
And she herked on her ravening crew,
Till the cities and towers were wrapt in a
blaze,
And the thunder it roared o'er the lands and
The widows they wailed, and the red blood ran,
And she threatened an end to the race of
She never lened, nor stood in awe,
Till caught by the lion's deadly paw.
Oh! then the eagle swinked for life,
And brainzelled up a mortal strife;
But flew she north, or flew she south,
She met wi' the growl of the lion's mouth.
With a mooted wing and waefu' maen,
The eagle sought her eiry again;
But lang may she cower in her bloody nest,
And lang, lang sleek her wounded breast,
Before she sey another flight,
To play wi' the norland lion's might.
But to sing the sights Kilmeny saw,
So far surpassing nature's law,
The singer's voice wad sink away,
And the string of his harp wad cease to play.
But she saw till the sorrows of man were by,
And all was love and harmony;
Till the stars of heaven fell calmly away,
Like the flakes of snaw on a winter's day.
Then Kilmeny begged again to see
The friends she had left in her own countrye,
To tell of the place where she had been,
And the glories that lay in the land unseen;
To warn the living maidens fair,
The loved of heaven, the spirits' care,
That all whose minds unmeled remain
Shall bloom in beauty when time is gane.
With distant music, soft and deep,
They lulled Kilmeny sound asleep;
And when she awakened, she lay her lane,
All happed with flowers in the green-wood
When seven long years had come and fled;
When grief was calm, and hope was dead;
When scarce
was remembered Kilmeny's
And her voice like the distant melodye
That floats along the twilight sea.
But she loved to raike the lanely glen,
And keeped afar frae the haunts of men;
Her holy hymns unheard to sing,
To suck the flowers and drink the spring.
But wherever her peaceful form appeared,
The wild beasts of the hills were cheered;
The wolf played blythely round the field,
The lordly byson lowed and kneeled;
The dun deer wooed with manner bland,
And cowered aneath her lily hand.
And when at even the woodlands rung,
When hymns of other worlds she sung
In ecstasy of sweet devotion,
Oh, then the glen was all in motion !
The wild beasts of the forest came,
Broke from their bughts and faulds the tame,
And goved around, charmed and amazed;
Even the dull cattle crooned and gazed,
And murmured and looked with anxious pain
For something the mystery to explain.
The buzzard came with the throstle-cock,
The corby left her houf in the rock;
The hind came tripping o'er the dew;
The black-bird alang wi' the eagle flew;
The wolf and the kid their raike began;
And the tod, and the lamb, and the leveret
The hawk and the hern attour them hung,
And the merl and the mavis forhooyed their
And all in a peaceful ring were hurled:
It was like an eve in a sinless world!
When a month and day had come and
gane,
Kilmeny sought the green-wood wene;
There laid her down on the leaves sae green,
And Kilmeny on earth was never mair seen.
But oh, the words that fell from her mouth,
Late, late in a gloamin, Kilmeny came hame! Were words of wonder, and words of truth!
"But, coming down from the hill-top,
I heard afar below,
How busy the jolly miller was,
And how the wheel did go.
"And I peeped into the widow's field,
And, sure enough, were seen
The yellow ears of the mildewed corn,
All standing stout and green.
"And down by the weaver's croft I stole,
To see if the flax were sprung;
And I met the weaver at his gate,
With the good news on his tongue.
"Now this is all I heard, mother,
And all that I did see;
So, pr'ythee, make my bed, mother,
For I'm tired as I can be."
'Tis the middle watch of a summer's nightThe earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon, and the stars, and the cloud less sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky Lue.
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cronest;
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below;
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
OH! WHERE DO FAIRIES HIDE THEIR By the walnut bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's
rack.
The stars are on the moving stream,
And fling, as its ripples gently flow,
A burnished length of wavy beam
In an eel-like, spiral line below;
The winds are whist, and the owl is still;
The bat in the shelvy rock is hid;
And nought is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did;
And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-wil..
Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings,
Ever a note of wail and woe,
Till morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow.
'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell:
The wood-tick has kept the minutes well;
He has counted them all with click and stroke
Deep in the heart of the mountain-oak,
And he has awakened the sentry elve
Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree
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