by Poe · Cluster: Ode · Nature vs Civilization · Pastoral Retreat
Abstract
Lyric of youthful solitude at a wild lake whose nocturnal terror becomes a tremulous delight, mingling death, imagination and a private Eden of the lone soul.
Connections
Topoi: Locus Amoenus Archetypes: Outsider Motifs: Water, Death, Grave, Night, Nature, Wind Themes & Concepts: Melancholy, Imagination, Alienation, Sublime, Mortality Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less—
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that tower’d around.
But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody—
Then—ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight—
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define—
Nor Love—although the Love were thine.
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining—
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.
1827.