In Black Lake Swamp, Muhlenberg County
We sentinel the lone waste places
Of swamps that are low and dim;
Line on line for the conflict,
Tall and silent and grim.
In the dawn of that far-off morning
We stood in serried lines-
The trees all clustered together,
And next to us stood the pines.
But great was the Master's cunning-
A wisdom no man may know;
So He sends the pines to the uplands,
While we to the swamps must go.
Mystic and brooding and silent,
Huddled together we stand;
Pickets in reedy marshes,
Guards of this lone, low land.
Dark are the aisles of our forests,
Tangled with briars and vines;
Few there be who can know us,
Few who can read our signs.
The lone owl broods in our branches,
The brown snakes come and go,
And still we whisper a secret
No man shall ever know.
Tall and mystic and brooding,
Waiting the long years through;
Men drive us away from the swampland,
But we come to the swampland anew.
For here we're master builders,
Lifting the soil from the slime;
Holding the drifts in decaying,
Bringing the earth to its prime.
Turning the low waste spaces
To soil that's black and deep,
Until we are cleared from our places
That men may sow and reap.