The Dismal Swamp (Bernard Covert)

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• (Posted 2023-10-06)  CPDL #76095:     

Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2023-10-06).   Score information: Letter, 12 pages, 695 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: The Dismal Swamp
Composer: Bernard Covert
Lyricist:
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1852 Oliver Ditson
Description: Arranged for the Amphions of the Empire State by Prof. Theodore Wood (1824–1895).

Original text and translations

English text

They made her a grave too cold and damp
For a heart so warm and true,
And she’s gone to the lake of the dismal swamp
Where all night long by her firefly lamp
She paddles her light canoe.

Her firefly lamp I soon shall see,
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 footsteps of death draw near.

Away to the dismal swamp he speeds,
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of weeds,
Through Many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.

And when on earth he lay down 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 starting, cried,— from his dream awake—
“Oh! when shall I see the dusky lake,
And the light canoe of my dear!”

He reached the lake, and a meteor spark
Quick over its surface played;
“Welcome,” he cried, “my dear one’s light,”
And the dim shore echoed for many a night
The name of that death-cold maid.

Till he made him a boat from birchen bark,
Which carried him off from the shore;
Long he followed that meteor spark,
The wind was high, and the night was dark,
And the boat returned no more.

And oft from the native hunter’s camp,
This lover and maid so true,
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the lake by their firefly lamp,
And to paddle their light canoe.