Lake Poets

“ So with walking through the woods, by the Lake, along the River Trail, up the mountains. The results are the same until the man who hates and despises the poets shouts out with glee and exclaims: "Them's my sentiments!" when you throw out with fervor such lines as:
Oh! the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water... How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! ”

“ Around a hundred peaks, ranging from noble Skiddaw to humble Swineside and Catbells, the shafts of light fall and ebb. Here in the rift between two summits is a stretch of purple, there a patch of rosy light fades on a scree-seamed brae. If the sun sets in a flurry of crimson cloud the spectators will hardly take their eyes from the lake: the reflections of the sky are so charming, so magnificent. No painter could match the evanescent changes, the kindlings of the sky, the soft portrayal of each living flame on the shimmering water, the green gloom of overhanging mountains. ”

“ There is a quiet horror about the Great Lakes which grows as one revisits them. Fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down and pushing up the hulls of big steamers; no right to tread the slow, deep-sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into haze and sea-fog. Lake Superior is all the same stuff as what towns pay taxes for, but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore, like a fully accredited ocean—a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent. ”

“ Ah! if one could always be in love and always young!
They went one day by invitation, Irene and Marion and King and the artist—as if it made any difference where they went—to Lonesome Lake, a private pond and fishing-lodge on the mountain-top, under the ledge of Cannon. There, set in a rim of forest and crags, lies a charming little lake—which the mountain holds like a mirror for the sky and the clouds and the sailing hawks—full of speckled trout, which have had to be educated by skillful sportsmen to take the fly. ”

“ The scenic effects and the joy of climbing are not lost by American tourists, yet these, as a rule, come to the Lake Country in a temper quite unlike that of the English holiday seekers. We come as pilgrims to a Holy Land of Song. We depend perhaps too little upon our own immediate sense of grandeur and beauty, and look perhaps too much to Wordsworth to interpret for us "Nature's old felicities." The Lake Country that has loomed so large in poetry may even disappoint us at the outset. ”

“ These poor people lingering on the shore—what were they afraid of? Why, was there ever anything so delightful as this—the cry of the wind and the rush of the water; and everything around in glancing lights and vivid colours; for the lake was not all of that intense and driven blue, it became a beautiful roseate purple where the sunlight struck through the shallows on the long banks of ruddy sand. ”

“ It may be that I heard what none other will hear, not through his own fault but through mine, and it may be that all ears are not tuned, or are too indifferent or indolent to listen; it is easier to hear 'Esther Waters' and to watch her struggles for her child's life than to hear the mysterious warble, soft as lake water, that abides in the heart. But I think there will always be a few who will agree with me that there is as much life in 'The Lake,' as there is in 'Esther Waters'—a different kind of life, not so wide a life, perhaps, but what counts in art is not width but depth. ”

“ Toward Fond du Lac, on the south, the horizon is the lake. South-southwestward, Black Wolf Point runs out, just over the verge, and the tops of the tall trees upon it peep up into view, like shadowy pile-work. Westward are the well-kept hospital grounds, fringed with stately elms overhanging the firm, gravelly beach, studded with ice-heaved bowlders, which extends northward to Neenah. The view to the north and northeast is delightfully hazy, being now dark with delicate fringes of forest which cap the occasional limestone promontories, and again losing itself in a watery sky-line. ”

“ On the contrary, the deep-blue, pure waters of Lake Tahoe, rivaling in purity and blueness the sky itself; its clear, bright emerald shore-waters, breaking snow-white on its clean rock and gravel shores; the Lake basin, not on a plain, with mountain scenery in the distance, but counter-sunk in the mountain's top itself,—these produce a never-ceasing and ever-increasing sense of joy, which naturally grows into love. ”

“ When the babel of the flock in the intakes ceases to the ear, the absence of all sound will depress the liveliest soul. The air, chill and cutting, goes soundlessly by; the lake broods in leaden, stirless gloom. There is no sound of tinkling rivulets; the raven’s croak, the curlew’s wild shriek, are no longer heard; the plover, the heron, and the birds of the hedgerow have flown to less sombre regions. When the stars are mirrored in the steely blue water and the moon throws shafts of glory across the mountain barrier, the silence is more crushing. ”

“ Then the shadows are deep under the black growth that spires up all about the little placid sheet of water, though it still reflects the sapphire blue of the clear sky above. The lake is, indeed, a hermit, dwelling always apart in its hollow among the spiring spruces, a tiny level of water, strangely beautiful for its placidity amid all the turmoil and grandeur about it. ”

“ One living long here might well measure the flight of time on a clear afternoon and evening by the changes of color in the lake. It is but a shallow pool, but you look through the mud of its bottom and see far below, by the inverted spires of the marginal trees, into infinite depths of a blue that is that of the sky but clarified and - 102 - intensified by the clear waters from which it shines till it is to the eye as perfect and inspiring as a clear musical note that leaps out of silence to the longing ear. ”

“ In a single stanza filled with beautiful names of the beautiful, we have a vision of the Lake, [Pg 69] with all its noblest banks, and bays, and bowers, and mountains—when in an instant we are wafted away from a scene that might well have satisfied our imagination and our heart—if high emotions were not uncontrollable and omnipotent—wafted away by Fancy with the speed of Fire—lakes, groves, cliffs, mountains, all forgotten—and alight amid an aerial host of figures, human and divine, on a spire that seeks the sky. ”

“ Far above, in the liquid darkness, sails the glory-freighted orb of the moon; beneath, in its light, lies the lake, in murmuring, troubled sleep; around stand the gentle mountains, wearing the cold reflection on their shoulders, or hiding it away in their glens. So much for midnight. To-morrow the sun will be lovely with the beauty of day. Under one aspect or another I have it always before me. At the end of the garden is moored a boat, in which Theodore and I have repeatedly explored the surface of the lake, and visited the mild wilderness of its shores. ”

“ Underneath is a little lake, which at sunset resembles a pool of blood that has trickled drop by drop from the deep wounds in the side of the mountain.
We are still advancing in this region of wonders. In our front soars an insuperable mass of forest-shagged rock. Behind it rises the absolutely regal Lafayette. Our footsteps are stayed by the glimmer of water through trees by the road-side. We have reached the summit of the pass.
Six miles of continued ascent from the Flume House have brought us to Profile Lake, which the road skirts. ”

“ And the lake, a gem in the mountain fastness, how calm it is! There is no melody in the pines this morning, their sighing is hushed, and the lake is still, its smooth surface only dotted here and there with the widening rings made by the leaping trout. How deep it is no man knows; how cruel it has been is the subject of many a story within the experience of the whites about its shores, and legends not a few among the red men. Seductive it is in its silent beauty, and treacherous as grand. Cold and relentless as fate, “it never surrenders its dead.” ”

“ A hundred varieties of trees and shrubs grow out of the grey lichen-covered rocks—it seems barbarous that the paddles of a steamer should disturb their delicate shadows. If I found this lake so beautiful on a day in the middle of October, when the bright autumn tints had changed into a russet brown, and when a chill north-east wind was blowing about the withered leaves, and the snow against the ship—and when, more than all, I was only just recovering from ague—what would it be on a bright summer-day, when the blue of heaven would be reflected in the clear waters of the St. Lawrence! ”

“ So immense is the distance, that this fall, spanning the seventeen hundred feet between the upper and lower lakes, does not break the brooding quiet with the whisper of an echo. The slim, white column parts upon the rocks into a diamond shape, and when, happily, the sunshine catches in its spray, it becomes a tangle of rainbows. But now, it unfolds its silver scarf silently, colourlessly as a ghost, and the green lake, so far below, receives the pouring tide with never a ripple to mar its smooth surface. ”

“ Soaring in silvered steeps where cloud-surfs break;
Virgin and vestal — Oh, a very Queen!
And at her feet there dreams a quiet lake.
My lake adores my mountain — well I know,
For I have watched it from its dawn-dream start,
Stilling its mirror to her splendid snow,
Framing her image in its trembling heart;
Glassing her graciousness of greening wood,
Kissing her throne, melodiously mad,
Thrilling responsive to her every mood,
Gloomed with her sadness, gay when she is glad.
My lake has dreamed and loved since time was born;
Will love and dream till time shall cease to be ”

“ The river itself rises in one of those lost and nameless lakes in the Floridan central ridge, then is hidden at once in the live oak and cypress forests that creep inland from the coasts. But it can never be said truly to flow. Over the billiard-table flatness of that land it moves so slowly and silently that it gives the effect of a lake stirred by the wind. These dark waters, and the moss-draped woodlands through which they move, are the especial treasure-field and delight of the naturalist and scientist from the great universities of the North. ”

“ Big Lake is that rarest of things, a poetic drama that is at once poetry and drama. To one of his later plays Mr. Riggs has given the title Sump’n Like Wings, and I can think of no words that so accurately describe what I felt when, over a year ago, I read the manuscript of Big Lake. There is a winged lightness in the words that the poet puts into the mouths of his young people, an ecstasy born of the sheer joy of being alive. How poor a thing is the mere “observation” of a clever playwright beside the deeper, [Pg viii] more incisive and highly intuitive scenes in Big Lake! ”

“ The jest—the story—the lively sally—the quick repartee, pass gayly around the circle. The destruction amongst the good things of the table becomes momentarily less, and finally ceases altogether. The solitary sunbeam melts away, but the clouds overhead are becoming richer and rosier; and the lake—it is a perfect Eden of beauty. Pure as innocence, and smooth as the brow of childhood, it stretches away, decked in the most glorious colors that eye ever beheld. ”

“ It is horribly mutilated and defaced. Its sides are thickly sowed with stunted trees, that bury their roots in its cracks and rents with a gripe of iron. In effect it is the barbican of the great ravine. Crouched underneath, by the shore of the lake, is a matted forest of firs and spruces, dwindled to half their usual size, grizzled with long lichens, and occupying, as if by stealth, the debatable ground between life and death. It is, in fact, more dead than alive. Deeply sunk beneath is the lake.
Hermit Lake—a little pool nestling underneath a precipice—demands a word. ”

“ Sometimes the light falls so sharply over them that they look green or dark-blue, and every separate fir-tree, each path and cleft, is visible miles away.
There are places where the mountains draw back and allow the plain to come forward and gaze at the lake. But when it sees the lake in its anger, hissing and spitting like a wild-cat, or sees it covered with that cold mist which happens when the sea-sprite is busy with brewing or washing, then it agrees that the mountains were right, and draws back to its narrow prison again. ”

“ Even the master artist fails here, since he can but express one mood of the lake—while it has a thousand every day. We have seen the Scotch, Italian and English lakes; we sailed the length of George and Champlain; we admired the mountain glories of Yellowstone Lake; we viewed Klamath and Crater Lakes from mountain heights, but none of them matched the wonderful color variations of Tahoe.
But we are on our way again, descending and climbing long grades which pass through pine forests and come out on headlands from which we gain new and entrancing views of lake and mountains. ”

“ Snowy, ice-sculptured ranges bounded the horizon all around, while the great lake, eighty miles long and fifty miles wide, lay fully revealed beneath a lily sky. The shorelines, marked by a ribbon of white sand, were seen sweeping around many a bay and promontory in elegant curves, and picturesque islands rising to mountain heights, and some of them capped with pearly cumuli. And the wide prairie of water glowing in the gold and purple of evening presented all the colors that tint the lips of shells and the petals of lilies—the most beautiful lake this side of the Rocky Mountains. ”