The fountain of vision, and fountain of light; 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 lic In the stream of life that wander'd by. And she heard a song, she heard it sung, She kend not where; but sae sweetly it rung, It fell on her ear like a dream of the morn, "Oh! blest be the day Kilmeny was born! Now shall it ken what a woman may be! 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 elyed away; When the sinner has gane to his waesome doom, Kilmeny shall smile in eternal bloom!" Then Kilmeny begg'd again to see The friends she had left in her own countrye, To tell of the place where she had been, To warn the living maidens fair, The loved of Heaven, the spirits' care, That all whose minds unmeled remain With distant music, soft and deep, And when she awakened, she lay her lane, All happed with flowers in the green-wood wene. But still and steadfast was her e'e! Such beauty bard may never declare, For there was no pride nor passion there; In that mild face could never be seen. Her seymar was the lily flower, And her check the moss-rose in the shower, And her voice like the distant melodye, But she loved to raike the lanely glen, And keeped afar frae the haunts of men; The wolf play'd blithely round the field, Oh, then the glen was all in motion ! The wild beasts of the forest came, Broke from their bughts and faulds the tame, Even the dull cattle crooned and gazed, And murmur'd, and look'd with anxious pain 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 hurl'd ; It was like an eve in a sinless world! When a month and a day had come and gane, Kilmeny sought the green-wood wene; And Kilmeny on earth was never mair seen. She left this world of sorrow and pain, And return'd to the Land of Thought again. |