It fell on the 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 borrow’d 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 wain’d her through the light, ’Twas like the motion of sound or sight; They seem’d to split the gales of air, And yet nor gale nor breeze was there. Unnumber’d groves below them grew, They came, they pass’d, and backward flew, Like floods of blossoms gliding on, In moment seen, in moment gone. O, never vales to mortal view Appear’d 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. gleid] spark, glow. elyed] vanished. 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 look’d, and she saw nor sun nor skies, But a crystal dome of a thousand dyes: She look’d, 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 e’en frae the dazzling view; She look’d again, and the scene was new. She saw a sun on a summer sky, And clouds of amber sailing bye; A lovely land beneath her lay, And that land had glens 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 seem’d to be hung; For there they were seen on their downward plain A thousand times and a thousand again; In winding lake and placid firth, Little peaceful heavens in the bosom of earth. marlèd] variegated, parti-coloured.