In the silence of the night,
I hear a baby crying,
And the rain is pelting me
As if it were dying.
The wind is blowing with a roar;
The trees have set to shake.
Fire balls drop in lightning form,
And there’s a lady in the lake.

Her form’s the picture of mystique,
And captivated were my eyes;
And I could no less watch her there
Than a meteor’s fiery demise.
She speaks to me through the wind
And bids my soul to obey.
I leave the safety of my lodge,
And wend myself her way.
Enchantment aptly describes
How she has me transfixed,
And I count my curséd stars,
That it’s me the lady’s picked.
I reach her, and she leans in close
To bestow a wicked kiss.
Plunging her blade into my heart,
I feel only murdered bliss.
The hammering in my ears dies,
And my heart no longer beats.
But steadily she’s kissing me,
Winking as she my dead gaze meets.
Without the utt’rance of a word,
She tells me that I am hers.
By the tone I can tell that I
Mean no more than jewels or furs.
I try to flee, and she smiles
With the smirk of wickedness.
I take a feeble step away,
And I stumble into darkness.

I awake as underground falls
Crash like a weary drake.
I feel bound and gagged like a fish
Swimming for survival’s sake.
Resurfacing at last, I feel
Alive and totally awake.
I’m free of the enchantress now.
But there’s a lady in the lake.

“Pet,” she whispers through the wind,
“Do you not see? Your force is mine.
I can slay you when I want;
I can make you beg and pine.”
I knew the truth of her words
And wondered why she would do this?
She laughed at my despair and said,
“It was just a little kiss.”
But what I lost with that kiss
No mortal should have to bear.
But I’m no more mortal than
The wind e’er blowing her hair.
She sent me forth to conquer all,
My lady’s gallant knight, indeed!
A soulless wretch lab’ring for
Her honor! Her monstrous steed!
Her fear I carried to regions
Where I “died” repeatedly,
But in the instant took back “life”,
For she never would set me free.
Slumbering kings and their dead guards
And battalions arrayed for war,
Would glimpse me for a second,
And then glimpse nothing more.
Their shafts and screams could not affect
Me, though they made me ache,
For they ne’er once affected
The lady in the lake.

How I prayed they could defeat me;
How I welcomed every slice!
But the mem’ry of her lips
Was my soul’s strengthening spice.
The salt I sowed in the ground,
The carnage I left behind,
Were blessings, if others could see
How she poisoned my soul and mind.
I am not my own, and no one
Should feel the harrows on the soul
From hating the one you love,
Who you’d love to make you whole.
Through the desert she egged me on,
And I hoped my thirst to slake.
But in the oasis’s mirage
There was a lady in the lake.

And no matter where she did send
Me, I heard her tones on the wind,
“You can climb a mountain’s glacial crest
Or chase the sun dying in the west,
But you can’t escape, make no mistake,
For I am your lady in the lake.”

“It seems my task is now all through;
There’s none alive but me and you.
I do whatever you wish,
Now may I have another kiss?”
She leaned in, and the wind spake,
“Well done, my simple, soulless snake.
Now we can spend eternity
Together through my sorcery.
None shall ever my reign break.
Now serve your Lady in the lake.”

“What shall I do?” I queried,
Wishing that time would have tarried,
Though I knew the reply.
Her smile was as soothing as lye,
As she handed me her poniard.
“Free your soul. Thrust the blade in hard.”
The evil glowed which did imbue
The blade which was to run me through,
Which once upon a cursed night stole
My humanity and my soul.
It’s funny how I’d sought to die,
But looking in her wicked eye,
Dying made me want to cry.
Her murd’rous blade I plunged in deep
Where my useless heart now did sleep.
I feel the fate she did bequeath
Me as she shows her iv’ry teeth.
It’s funny that now as I die,
I miss her kiss and begin to cry.
She’ll be the last thing I shall see,
Caressing my face laughingly.
The lips I slaughtered nations for
Shall not caress mine anymore.
My knees and vision start to shake;
She smiles, the lady in the lake.

I wake up like a cotton gin,
And a storm is blowing in.
I’m at my lodge, safe within.
What a fright that must have been.
The dream gave me cold, clammy skin.
The wind brings me a familiar laugh
That rends my soulless form in half.
Memories cause my hands to shake,
And there’s a lady in the lake.