Return To The Lake
Poem: Based off of Edgar Allan Poe's poem, The Lake 1827 - For in that lake I seem’d to see The shape of old mortality, Not grim as priests and sages tell, But gentle as a vesper bell.
The Lake by Edgar Allen Poe
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,
And the wind would pass me by
In its stilly melody,
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright —
But a tremulous delight,
And a feeling undefin’d,
Springing from a darken’d mind.
Death was in that poison’d wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his dark imagining;
Whose wild’ring thought could even make
An Eden of that dim lake.
Return To The Lake
And oft in years that wander’d by,
Beneath an autumn tinted sky,
I sought again that lonely strand
Of pine dark hill and blacken’d land.
For still its quiet waters bore
A charm I had not known before.
No more the tremor of a child
Awoke beneath its aspect wild,
Yet something in the evening air,
Half sorrow and half rapture there,
Would draw my thoughts from common things
To shadow’d and forgotten springs.
For in that lake I seem’d to see
The shape of old mortality,
Not grim as priests and sages tell,
But gentle as a vesper bell.
A reminder that’s soft and low
Of all the dreams we cannot hold.
And thus I loved that solemn place,
Its dark reflection and its grace.
For there I learn’d that gloom may keep
Its own strange harvest in the deep,
And that the heart may beauty take
From even such a lonely lake.
By Heather Patton / Verdant Butterfly
Tag: Hazel, The Poe-tato Writing Collective
Subscribe to Verdant Butterfly
By Heather Patton · Launched a year ago
A creative space with over 170 enchanting stories and poems. I write fantasy, folklore and genre bending prose that can step off the path into comedy, adventure or the unsettling at any moment.
Online threats are crimes — Report at tips.fbi.gov
I love Poe but I liked your poem better. 🖤
What struck me most was the way mortality appears not as a threat, but as something quiet and present. There’s an unusual gentleness in those lines that continues to resonate after the reading.