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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,

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And the ghastly wind went by

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In a dirge-like melody,

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Then — ah then I would awake

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To the terror of that lone lake.

 

Yet that terror was not fright,

But a tremulous delight —

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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,

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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.