The Lake of the Dismal Swamp
Thomas Moore
1779 to 1852
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Written at Norfolk, in Virginia
“They made her a grave, too cold and damp
For a soul so warm true;
And she’s gone to the Lake of the Swamp,
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
paddles her white canoe.
“And her fire-fly lamp I shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
and loving our life shall be,
And I’ll hide maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of is near.”
Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds—
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, of reeds,
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.
And when on the he sunk to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,
lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!
And him the she-wolf stirr’d the brake,
And the copper-snake breath’d in his ear,
Till he starting cried, from his awake,
“Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake,
the white canoe of my dear?”
He saw Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface play’d—
“Welcome,” he said, “my dear one’s light!”
the dim shore echoed for many a night
The of the death-cold maid.
Till he hollow’d a boat the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;
Far, far he follow’d the meteor spark,
The wind was and the clouds were dark,
And the boat return’d more.
But oft, from the Indian hunter’s camp,
This and maid so true
Are seen at the hour midnight damp
To cross the Lake by a fire-fly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe!