A Lay of Fairy Land.

It is upon the Sabbath-day, at rising of the sun, That to Glenmore's black forest-side a shepherdess hath gone,

From eagle and from raven to guard her little

flock,

And read her Bible as she sits on greensward or on rock.

Her widow-mother wept to hear her whisper'd prayer so sweet,

Then through the silence bless'd the sound of her soft parting feet;

And thought, "While thou art praising God amid the hills so calm,

Far off this broken voice, my child, will join the morning psalm."

So down

upon her rushy couch her moisten'd cheek she laid,

And away into the morning hush is flown her Highland maid;

In heaven the stars are all bedimm'd, but in its dewy mirth

A star more beautiful than they is shining on the

earth,

In the deep mountain-hollow the dreamy day is done,

For close the peace of Sabbath brings the rise and set of sun;

The mother through her lonely door looks forth unto the green,

Yet the shadow of her shepherdess is no where to be seen.

Within her loving bosom stirs one faint throb of

fear

"Oh! why so late ?"-a footstep-and she knows her child is near;

So out into the evening the gladden'd mother goes, And between her and the crimson light her daughter's beauty glows.

The heather-balm is fragrant, the heather-bloom is

fair,

But 'tis neither heather-balm nor bloom that

wreathes round Mhairi's hair;

Round her white brows so innocent, and her blue quiet eyes,

That look out bright, in smiling light, beneath the flowery dyes.

These flowers, by far too beautiful among our hills to grow,

These gem-crown'd stalks, too tender to bear one flake of snow :

Not all the glens of Caledon could yield so bright

a band,

That in its lustre breathes and blooms of some fair foreign land.

"The hawk hath long been sleeping upon the pillar

stone,

And what hath kept my Mhairi in the moorlands all alone?

And where got she those lovely flowers mine old eyes dimly see?

Where'er they grew, it must have been upon a lovely tree."

"Sit down beneath our elder-shade, and I my tale will tell."

And speaking, on her mother's lap the wondrous chaplet fell;

It seem'd as if its blissful breath did her worn heart

restore,

Till the faded eyes of age did beam as they had beam'd of yore.

"The day was something dim-but the gracious sunshine fell

On me, and on my sheep and lambs, and our own little dell;

Some lay down in the warmth, and some began to

feed,

And I took out the Holy Book, and thereupon did

read.

"And while that I was reading of Him who for us

died,

And blood and water shed for us from out his blessed side,

An angel's voice above my head came singing o'er and o'er,

In Abernethy-wood it sank, now rose in dark Glenmore.

"Mid lonely hills, on Sabbath, all by myself, to

hear

That voice, unto my beating heart did bring a joyful

fear;

For well I knew the wild song that waver'd o'er my

head,

Must be from some celestial thing, or from the happy dead.

“I look'd up from my Bible, and lo! before me

stood,

In her green graceful garments, the Lady of the

Wood;

Silent she was, and motionless, but when her eyes met mine,

I knew she came to do me good, her smile was so divine.

"She laid her hand as soft as light upon your daughter's hair,

And

up that white arm flowed my heart into her bosom fair;

And all at once I loved her well, as she

had been,

my mate

Though she had come from Fairy Land, and was the Fairy Queen."

Then started Mhairi's mother at that wild word of

fear,

For a daughter had been lost to her for many a hopeless year;

The child had gone at sunrise among the hills to

roam,

But many a sunset since had been, and none hath brought her home.

Some thought that Fhaum, the savage shape that on the mountain dwells,

Had somewhere left her lying dead among the heather bells,

And others said the river red had caught her in her glee,

And her fair body swept unseen into the unseen

sea.

But thoughts come to a mother's breast a mother only knows,

And grief, although it never dies, in fancy finds

repose;

By day she feels the dismal truth that death has ta'en her child,

At night she hears her singing still, and dancing o'er the wild.

And then her country's legends lend all their lovely faith,

Till sleep reveals a silent land, but not a land of

death

Where, happy in her innocence, her living child doth play

With those fair elves that wafted her from her own world away.

"Look not so mournful, mother; 'tis not a tale of

woe

The Fairy Queen stoop'd down, and left a kiss upon my brow,

And faster than mine own two doves e'er stoop'd unto my hand,

Our flight was through the ether-then we dropt on Fairy Land.