The Ettrick Shepherd continued for a number of years to publish sketches, stories, and so forth, in prose and verse. He describes well, and in his prose compositions often breaks out into flashes of keen broad humor, but he is not particularly successful in the construction of plots, or in the arrangement of incidents. He is most at home in the regions of pure fancy. The moment he sets foot in fairyland he becomes inspired, and pours out "in delightful profusion" his beautiful imaginings. Inferior to Burns in depth of passion, in keen perception of the beautiful, and in the description of actual scenes, he is perhaps superior to him in the wild delicacy of his inventions and in the rich coloring of his imaginative pictures. Burns was the poet of nature, and went far beyond his Scottish contemporaries and successors, in strength of conception, beauty of imagery, intensity of feeling, and melody of verse. But Hogg excelled in imaginative musing, and became, by natural right, the acknowledged "bard of fairyland." His legend of "Bonny Kilmeny" has been universally admired.
Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen,
But it was na to meet Duneira's men;
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see,
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
It was only to hear the yorlin sing,
And pu' the cress flower round the spring;
The scarlet hypp and the hind berrye,
And the nut that hung frae the hazel tree;
But Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny[167] look o'er the wa',
And lang may she seek i' the greenwood shaw;
Lang the laird of Duneira blame,
And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame!
When many a day had come and fled,
When grief grew calm, and hope was dead,
When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung,
When the beads-man had prayed, and the dead-bell rung,
Late, late in a gloamin, when all was still,
When the fringe was red on the western hill,
The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane,
The reek o' the cot hung over the plain,
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane;[168]
When the ingle lowed[169] with an eiry[170] leme,
Late, late in the gloamin, Kilmeny came hame!
Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?
Lang hae we sought baith holt and dean,[171]
By linn, by ford and greenwood tree,
Yet you are halesome and fair to see.
Where gat you that joup[172] o' the lily scheen?
That bonny snook[173] o' the birk sae green?
And these roses, the fairest that ever were seen?
Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?
Kilmeny looked up wi' a lovely grace,
But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face;
As still was her look, and as still was her ee,
As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea,
Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea.
For Kilmeny had been she knew not where,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare;
Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew,
Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew,
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a land where sin had never been,
A land of love and a land of light,
Withouten sun, or moon, or night;
Where the river swa'd[174] a living stream,
And the light a pure celestial beam:
The land of vision it would seem,
A still, an everlasting dream.
In yon greenwood there is a waik,
And in that waik there is a wene,
And in that wene there is a maike,[175]
That neither hath flesh, blood nor bane,
And down in yon greenwood he walks his lane!
In that grene wene Kilmeny lay
Her bosom happed wi' the flowrets gay;
And the air was soft, and the silence deep,
And bonny Kilmeny fell sound asleep;
She kenn'd nae mair, nor opened her ee,
Till waked by the hymns of a far countrye,
She wakened on couch of the silk sae slim,
All striped wi' the bars of the rainbow's rim;
And lovely beings around her were rife,
Who erst had travelled mortal life.
They clasped her waist and her hands sae fair,
They kissed her cheek, and they kamed her hair,
And round came many a blooming fere,
Saying, "Bonny Kilmeny, ye're welcome here."
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 emerant 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 might never fade;
And they smiled on heaven, when they saw her lie
In the stream of life that wandered by;
And she heard a song, she heard it sung,
She kenn'd not where, but so sweetly it rung,
It fell on her ears like a dream of the morn:
"O, blest be the day Kilmeny was born!
Now shall the land of spirits see,
Now shall it ken what a woman may be!
The sun that shines on the world so bright,
A borrowed gleam from the fountain of light:
And the moon that sleeks the sky sae dun,
Like a gowden bow, or a beamless sun,
Shall skulk away, and be seen nae mair,
And the angels shall miss them travelling the air.
But lang, lang after both night and day,
When the sun and the world have 'eelged[176] away,
When the sinner has gane to his waesome doom,
Kilmeny shall smile in eternal bloom!"
They sooft[177] her away to a mountain green,
To see what mortal had never 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 no sun nor skies,
But a crystal dome of a thousand dyes.
She looked and she saw no lang 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 een from the dazzling view,
She looked again, and the scene was new.
She saw a sun on a simmer sky,
And clouds of amber sailing by;
A lovely land aneath her lay,
And that land had lakes and mountains gray;
And that land had valleys and hoary piles,
And merlit seas, and a thousand isles;
She saw the corn wave on the vale;
She saw the deer run down the dale;
And many a mortal toiling sore,
And she thought she had seen the land afore.
To sing of the sights Kilmeny saw,
So far surpassing nature's law,
The singer's voice would sink away,
And the string of his harp would cease to play,
But she saw while the sorrows of man were by,
And all was love and harmony;
While the sterns of heaven fell lonely away,
Like the flakes of snow on a winter's day.