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Leonard Cohen Lyrics for Song: The Traitor
 Lyrics for Album: Complete Studio Albums Collection [2011]
 
 
 
 4810>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 rumour 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 paralysed 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
 
 4810>
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| Album Lyrics: Complete Studio Albums Collection [2011] |  
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  Leonard Cohen
 "Complete Studio Albums Collection [2011]"
 
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