Lyric Poem · Love

The Lake

by Edgar Allan Poe

Reading room

1In spring of youth it was my lot

2To haunt of the wide world a spot

3The which I could not love the less —

4So lovely was the loneliness

5Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,

6And the tall pines that towered around.

7But when the Night had thrown her pall

8Upon the spot, as upon all,

9And the mystic wind went by

10Murmuring in melody —

11Then — ah, then, I would awake

12To the terror of the lone lake.

13Yet that terror was not fright,

14But a tremulous delight —

15A feeling not the jewelled mine

16Could teach or bribe me to define —

17Nor Love — although the Love were thine.

18Death was in that poisonous wave,

19And in its gulf a fitting grave

20For him who thence could solace bring

21To his lone imagining —

22Whose solitary soul could make

23An Eden of that dim lake.

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“The Lake” by Edgar Allan Poe — quilloak.com/poems/the-lake

Quick facts

Poem: The Lake
Poet: Edgar Allan Poe
Length: 23 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Love, Death & Loss, Nature

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 23 lines · 4 stanzas of 5–6 lines
Line length: Mostly 8-syllable lines (tetrameter length).

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849
Source record: PoetryDBThe Lake by edgar-allan-poe, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 d176f32f3e002e4f…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Love Death & Loss Nature

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