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 bedeman 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 girned 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
To feed wi' the deer on the mountain gray.
He gowled at the carle, and he gecked at heaven,
But his mark was set, and his arles given.
Kilmeny a while her een withdrew;

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 seas. The widows they wailed, and the red blood ran, And she threatened an end to the race of man :

She never lened, nor stood in awe,

Till claught 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 cour 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 bye, And all was love and harmony;

Till the stars of heaven fell calmly away,
Like the flakes of snaw on a winter day.

Then Kilmeny begged again to see
The friends she had left in her own country,
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 wene.

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,

But still and stedfast was her ee!

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 lilly 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 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 hill were cheered;
The wolf played blythly round the field,
The lordly byson lowed and kneeled;
The dun deer wooed with manner bland,
And cowered aneath her lilly hand.