Now the swan it floated on the English river   Ah, the rose of high romance, it opened wide   A sun tanned woman yearned me through the summer   And the judges watched us from the other side      I told my mother, "Mother, I must leave you   Preserve my room but do not shed a tear   Should rumor of a shabby ending reach you   It was half my fault and half the atmosphere"      But the rose I sickened with a scarlet fever   And the swan I tempted with a sense of shame   She said at last I was her finest lover   And if she withered I would be to blame      The judges said, "You missed it by a fraction   Rise up and brace your troops for the attack"   Ah, the dreamers ride against the men of action   Oh, see the men of action falling back      But I lingered on her thighs, a fatal moment   I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still   My falsity had stung me like a hornet   The poison sank and it paralyzed my will      I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers   That they had been deserted from above   So on battlefields from here to Barcelona   I'm listed with the enemies of love      And long ago she said, "I must be leaving   Ah, but keep my body here to lie upon   You can move it up and down and when I'm sleeping   Run some wire through that rose and wind the swan"      So daily I renew my idle duty   I touch her here and there, I know my place   I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty   And people call me traitor to my face