The Fireside Encyclopaedia of Poetry: Comprising the Best Poems of the Most ...

Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend,
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.

Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue, she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime:
Or, if Virtue feeble were,
Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

JOHN MILTON.

FAREWELL TO THE FAIRIES. FAREWELL rewards and Fairies!

Good housewives now may say; For now foule sluts in dairies

Doe fare as well as they:

And though they sweepe their hearths no less

Than mayds were wont to doe, Yet who of late for cleaneliness Finds sixe-pence in her shoe?

Lament, lament old Abbies,

The fairies lost command;
They did but change priests babies,

But some have changed your land:
And all your children stoln from thence
Are now growne Puritanes,
Who live as changelings ever since,
For love of your demaines.

At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleepe and sloth,

These prettie ladies had.

When Tom came home from labour,

Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabour,
And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelayes

Of theirs, which yet remaine; Were footed in Queene Maries dayes On many a grassy playne. But since of late Elizabeth

And later James came in;
They never danced on any heath,
As when the time hath bin.

By which wee note the fairies
Were of the old profession:

Their songs were Ave Maries,

Their dances were procession.
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas,
Or farther for religion fled,
Or else they take their ease.
A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure;
And whoso kept not secretly

Their mirth, was punish'd sure:
It was a just and Christian deed
To pinch such blacke and blue:
Oh how the common-welth doth need
Such justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters;
A Register they have,
Who can preserve their charters;

A man both wise and grave.
An hundred of their merry pranks,

By one that I could name

Are kept in store; con twenty thanks To William for the same.

To William Churne of Staffordshire Give laud and praises due,

When many lang day had come and fled, | When she spake of the lovely forms she When grief grew calm, and hope was had seen, dead,

And a land where sin had never been; When mess for Kilmeny's soul had been A land of love, and a land of light, Withouten sun, or moon, or night;

sung, When the bedes-man had prayed, and the Where the river swa'd a living stream.

deadbell rung:

Late, late in a gloamin when all was still,

When the fringe was red on the westlin
hill,

The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane,
The reek o' the cot hung o'er the plain,
Like a little wee cloud in the world its
lane;

When the ingle lowed with an eiry leme,
Late, late in the gloamin Kilmeny came
hame!

"Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you
been?

Lang hae we sought baith holt and dean;
By linn, by fora, and greenwood tree,
Yet you are halesome and fair to see.
Where gat you that joup o' the lily
sheen?

That bonny snood o' the birk sae green?
And these roses the fairest that ever was
seen?-

And the light a pure and cloudless beam;
The land of vision it would seem,
A still, an everlasting dream.

In yon greenwood there is a waik,
And in that waik there is a wene,

And in that wene there is a maike,
That neither has flesh, nor blood, nor bane;
And down in yon greenwood he walks his
lane.

In that green wene Kilmeny lay,
Her bosom happ'd wi' flowerets gay;
But the air was soft and the silence deep,
And bonny Kilmeny fell sound asleep.
She kenned nae mair, nor open'd her ee,
Till waked by the hymns of a far coun-
trye.

She woke on a couch of the silk sae
slim,

All striped wi' the bars of the rainbow's rim;

And lovely beings round were rife,

Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you Who erst had travelled mortal life;

been?"

Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace, But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face;

As still was her look, and as still was

her ee,

As the stillness that lay on the emerant

lea,

And aye they smiled, and 'gan to speer,
"What spirit has brought this mortal
here?"

"Lang have I ranged the world wide,"
A meek and reverend fere replied;
"Baith night and day I have watched the

fair

Eident a thousand years and mair. Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless Yes, I have watched o'er ilk degree, Wherever blooms femenitye;

sea.

For Kilmeny had been she ken'd not And sinless virgin, free of stain
In mind and body, fand I nane.

where,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could Never, since the banquet of time,
Found I a virgin in her prime,
Till late this bonnie maiden I saw,
As spotless as the morning snaw:

not declare;

Kilmeny had been where the cock never

crew,

Where the rain never fell, and the wind Full twenty years she has lived as free

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:-
O, blessed be the day Kilmeny was born!
Now shall the land of the spirits see,
Now shall it ken what a woman may be!
Many lang year in sorrow and pain,
Many lang year through the world we've

gane,

The sky was a dome of crystal bright,
The fountain of vision, and fountain of
light:

The emerant 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 fade;

And they smiled on heaven, when they saw her lie

In the stream of life that wandered by. And she heard a song, she heard it sung, She kend not where; but sae sweetly it rung,

Commissioned to watch fair womankind, For it's they who nurse the immortal It fell on her ear like a dream of the mind.

morn:

We have watched their steps as the dawn- "O, blest be the day Kilmeny was

ing shone,

And deep in the greenwood walks alone; By lily bower and silken bed,

The viewless tears have o'er them shed; Have soothed their ardent minds to sleep, Or left the couch of love to weep.

We have seen! we have seen! but the time maun come,

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, And the angels will weep at the day of Like a gouden bow, or a beamless sun,

doom!

"O, would the fairest of mortal kind
Aye keep these holy truths in mind,
That kindred spirits their motions see,
Who watch their ways with anxious ee,
And grieve for the guilt of humanitye!
O, 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 mind that kythes 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, O, 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:

Shall wear away and be seen nae mair, And the angels shall miss them travelling

the air.

But lang, lang after baith night and day, When the sun and the world have fled

away;

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,

'Twas 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,
A moment seen, in a moment gone.
O, 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 thence they can view the world She saw the plaid and the broad claymore, And the brows that the badge of freedom bore ;

below,

And heaven's blue gates with sapphires glow,

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 dyes;
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 linkèd 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 lakes and mountains

gray;

And that land had valleys and hoary

piles,

And marlèd 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

swung,

On every shore they seemed to be hung:

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;
And a leifu' maiden stood at her knee,
With a silver wand and melting ee;
Her sovereign shield till love stole in,
And poisoned all the fount within.

Then a gruff untoward bedes-man came,
And hundit the lion on his dame;
And the guardian maid wi' the dauntless

ee,

She dropped a tear, and left her knee; And she saw till the queen frae the lion fled,

Till the bonniest flower of the world lay dead;

A coffin was set on a distant plain,
And she saw the red blood fall like rain:
Then bonny Kilmeny's heart grew sair,
And she turned away, and could look nae
mair.

Then the gruff grim carle girnèd amain, And they trampled him down, but he rose again;

And he baited the lion to deeds of weir, Till he lapped the blood to the kingdom

dear;

And weening his head was danger-preef, When crowned with the rose and clover

leaf,

He gowled at the carle, and chased him

away

For there they were seen on their down- To feed wi' the deer on the mountain

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 seas.

When seven lang years had come and fled;

When grief was calm, and hope was dead; When scarce was remembered Kilmeny's name,

Late, late in a gloamin Kilmeny came hame.

And O, her beauty was fair to see,

The widows they wailed, and the red blood | But still and steadfast was her ee!

ran,

And she threatened an end to the race of

man:

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 gowl 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 un

seen;

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 greenwood

wene.

Such beauty bard may never declare,
For there was no pride nor passion there;
And the soft desire of maidens' een

In that mild face could never be seen.
Her seymar was the lily flower,
And her cheek the moss-rose in the
shower;

And her voice like the distant melodye,
That floats along the twilight sea.
But she loved to raike the lanely glen,
And keep 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 eve the woodlands rung,
When hymns of other worlds she sung
In ecstasy of sweet devotion,

O, then the glen was all in motion !
The wild beasts of the forest came,
Broke from their boughts 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 blackbird alang wi' the eagle flew ;
The hind came tripping o'er the dew;
The wolf and the kid their raike began,
And the tod, and the lamb, and the leveret
ran;

The hawk and the hern attour them hung,
And the merl and the mavis forhooyed

their young; And all in a peaceful ring were hurled :It was like an eve in a sinless world!

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