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.