Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/453

398 afterward heard of. As he had frequently said in his ravings that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it was supposed he had wandered into that dreadful wilderness and had died of hunger, or had been lost in some of its dreadful morasses."—Tradition.

"They made her a grave too cold and damp For a soul so warm and true, And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Where all night long, by her fire-fly lamp, She paddles her white canoe.

Her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, And her paddle I soon shall hear; Long and loving our life shall be. And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree When the footstep of death is near."

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds, His path was rugged and sore. Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds. Through many a fen where the serpent feeds, And man never trod before.

And when on the earth he sank to sleep, If slumber his eyelids knew. He lay where the deadly vine doth weep Its venomous tear and nightly steep The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake. And the copper-snake breathed in his ear. Till he stirring cried, from his dream awake, "Oh, when shall I see the dusky lake, And the white canoe of my dear?"