I wish I was by that dim lake
Where sinful souls their farewells take
Of this vain world, and half-way lie
In Death’s cold shadow, ere they die.
There, there, far from thee,
Deceitful world, my home should be,—
Where, come what might of gloom and pain,
False hope should ne’er deceive again!
The lifeless sky,—the mournful sound
Of unseen waters, falling round,—
The dry leaves quivering o’er my head,
Like man, unquiet even when dead,—
These, ay! these should wean
My soul from life’s deluding scene,
And turn each thought, each wish I have,
Like willows, downward towards the grave.
As they who to their couch at night
Would welcome sleep first quench the light,
So must the hopes that keep this breast
Awake be quench’d, ere it can rest.
Cold, cold, my heart must grow,
Unchanged by either joy or woe,
Like freezing founts, where all that’s thrown
Within their current turns to stone.
～"I wish I was by that dim Lake," by Thomas Moore
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In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world 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 towered 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.
～"The Lake — To —" (1827), by Edgar Allan Poe
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