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The daisies white and the sweet wild rose
Clad mead and hedge in their summer snows.
Fair Lady Kathleen wept alway:
‘Oh, misery mine for a year and a day!’

A ghostly moon in a steel cold sky,
A dance of leaves by the wind swept by,
Like the mirthless rushing of phantom feet.
But the Lady Kathleen murmured: ‘Sweet!
Love keeps a woman’s summer young.’
She sped without fear in the awe of night,
Though the shuddering shadows would stay her flight
With the thought of a horror unknown,
Or a streamlet would laugh ’neath the hedge unshown;
But Lady Kathleen wept no more:
‘Oh, joy is mine, for my trial’s o’er!’

To the white thorn-tree on the fairy rath
The Lady Kathleen quick took her path,
Till she stood in the midst of the elfin host.
Like a lily pale or a fair white ghost.
Loud the fairies laughed in their mad retreat.
As she found her love with a whispered ‘Sweet!
It were no sorrow to lose for you
Youth’s golden days or weep long nights through.’