“Moore’s Dismal Swamp, of course. Sometimes I find myself saying it over fifty times a day:
‘They have made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;
She has gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.’
Be sure and pronounce ‘swamp’ to rhyme exactly with ‘damp’ and ‘lamp,’ ” continued Iris; “the effect is more tragic.”
“Certainly,” said Mokes, “far more.”
Passing the morass on planks, we walked down a path bordered with Spanish-bayonets, crossed the creek on a small boat lying there, and entered the enchanted domain. It seemed to be a large plantation run to waste; symmetrical fields surrounded by high hedges of the sour orange, loaded with its fruit; old furrows still visible in the never-freezing ground; every where traces of careful labor and cultivation, which had made the sandy island blossom as the rose. In the centre of a broad lawn were the ruins of a mansion, the white chimney alone standing, like a monument to the past. Beyond, a path led down to a circle of trees with even, dense foliage; there, in the centre, shut out from the glare of the sunshine, alone in the greenery, stood a solitary tomb, massive and dark, without date or inscription save what the little fingers of the lichen had written. We stood around in silence, and presently another pleasure party came down the path and joined us—gay young girls with sprays of orange blossoms in their hats, young men carrying trailing wreaths of the yellow jasmine. Together we filled the green tree circle; and one of the strangers, a fair young girl, moved by a sudden impulse, stepped forward and laid a spray of jasmine on the lonely tomb.
TOMB ON FISH ISLAND.
“ ‘Et in Arcadia ego,’ ” said John, who stood behind me. “Do you remember that picture of the gay flower-decked Arcadians coming through a forest with song and laughter, and finding there a solitary tomb with that inscription? This is Arcadia, and we too have found the tomb.”
Strolling on down the island, we came to a long arched walk of orange-trees trained into a continuous arbor.
“What a lovely wild old place!” said Iris. “What is its history? Does any body know?”