“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: 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 fade; And they smiled on Heaven, when they saw her lie In the stream of life that wandered bye. 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-- “O, 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 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!”
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. 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 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 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 e’en frae the dazzling view; She looked again, and the scene was new.