In the poem, what effect does the lake have on the speaker?

In Edgar
Allen Poe's "The Lake," the effect of the titular body of water on the speaker seems
strange and even contradictory at times. The speaker contrasts emotions that are typically
considered to be negative with a reaction that seems positive. For example, he describes the
loneliness and isolation that he feels when near the lake as "lovely." He goes on to
say that when the night falls on the lake, he awakens to a feeling of terror, but that the
terror is not an oppressive force that haunts and torments him, but rather a feeling of
excitement and delight.

The speaker admits that the feeling may be
considered perverse, and that not even the riches of a "jeweled mine" can "teach
or bribe" him to explain what it was that the feeling implies. He even goes as far to say
that the secrets of love hold no explanation for what he might be feeling.


In the end, he attributes the feeling of the lake to the presence of Death,
who he personifies as an entity that is present in a "poisonous wave." He decides that
the lake is the domain of death, and that it alone could make an "Eden" of the
lake.