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TO ——
[[v]]
IN youth's spring 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,
[[v]]
And the ghastly wind went by
[[v]]
In a dirge-like melody,
[[v]]
Then — ah then I would awake
[[v]]
To the terror of that lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight —
[[v]]
A feeling not the jewell’d mine
Could teach or bribe me to define,
Nor Love — although the love were thine.
Death was in that poison’d wave,
[[v]]
And in its depth 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.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - JHW11, 1911] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - The Lake (ed. J. H. Whitty, 1911)