“The beauty of a lake reflects the beauty around it.
When the mind is still, the beauty of the Self is seen reflected in it.”
B.K.S. Iyengar

American poet Wallace Stevens wrote that “perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake”. How to blame him? A lake offers us the possibility of an intimate conversation with ourselves. In this sense, it’s a privileged place for all sensitive souls. With its reflective surface and its alchemic lights tricks, a lake is always able to surprise us.

The suggestive magic of Lake Como, in particular, has always inspired painters, composers, philosophers, rich merchants, artists, scientists: there’s no heart immune to the romance of an expanse of water reflected in the sun.

With World Poetry Day, March 21, UNESCO recognizes the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind.

To celebrate this special day, we want to read with you the works that three poets have written about Lake Como between the end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. We’re talking about Wordsworth, Longfellow, Landon: three poets, three different backgrounds, three creative souls that have been touched by Lake Como magic and were able to turn their emotions into unforgettable poetical words.

We chose right these three authors because in their works the link between the creative expression and the beauty of the lake is particularly vivid: in Landon there’s a clear symmetry between her nostalgia and the faded colors of the lake; in Wordsworth’s poetry we distinctly feel the human need - that all of us sooner or later have in a lifetime - of being alone to listen the sound of the Self; and in Longfellow, we perceive the fear of losing the immaculate peace experienced at Lake Como - in other words the fragile side of the timeless beauty of our region.

In all cases, the seductive allure of Lake Como enters with a kind of sublime arrogance in the poets’ souls, and remains there forever.

Wordsworth: Lake Como in his “Descriptive Sketches”

As most of you probably know, William Wordsworth (1170-1850) was an English Romantic poet who, together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature.

He had quite a rebel and loner personality: he liked to wander alone in the forest. “Should the guide I choose”, he wrote, ”be nothing better than a wandering cloud, I cannot miss my way”.

Wordworth was able to overcome his difficult temper only with an intimate dialogue with Nature, and with lakes in particular: not by chance he was born in the Lake District (northern Cumberland), and the contact with the atavistic beauty of this region was most probably the fuel of his creative energy.

In 1790, after a short period in France during the Revolution (where he was influenced by Rousseau’s ideas), Wordsworth moved to Lake Como. He dedicated four pages of his Descriptive Sketches Taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps (published in 1793) to our area: we do think all lovers of nature and free spirits should read these pages before visiting Lake Como.

Wordsworth’s verses convey an incredibly powerful vitality and a deep harmony with the natural world: the protagonist is always the landscape, with daily life flowing in its serene rhythm. Wordsworth felt in love with all the humble inhabitants of the lake (in particular the fishermen and the dark-eyed maids), the silence in the chestnuts forests, the rhythmic dance of the waves on the door of the houses, the ancient mule tracks that carried generations of peasants, traders, smugglers.

In Wordsworth’s view, the Earth itself is jealous of Lake Como, because she’s aware of its unique beauty. The lake is “a treasure whom the earth keeps to herself, confined as in a depth of Abyssinian privacy”.

And, Como! thou, a treasure whom the earth
Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth
Of Abyssinian privacy. I spake
Of thee, thy chestnut woods, and garden plots
Of Indian-corn tended by dark-eyed maids;
Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines,
Winding from house to house, from town to town,
Sole link that binds them to each other ; walks,
League after league, and cloistral avenues,
Where silence dwells if music be not there:
While yet a youth undisciplined in verse,
Through fond ambition of that hour, I strove
To chant your praise ; nor can approach you now
Ungreeted by- a more melodious song,
Where tones of nature smoothed by learned art
May flow in lasting current. Like a breeze
Or sunbeam over your domain I passed
In motion without pause; but ye have left
Your beauty with me, a serene accord
Of forms and colors, passive, yet endowed
In their subinissivencss with power as sweet
And gracious, almost might I dare to say,
As virtue is, or goodness; sweet as love,
Or the remembrance of a generous deed,
Or mildest visitation of pure thought,
When God, the giver of all joy, is thanked
Religiously, in silent blessedness;
Sweet as this last herself, for such it is.

Longfellow, “Cadenabbia”: an incredible yet fragile beauty that can fade away at any moment

As many of you probably know, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) is one of the first American writers to get international popularity overseas: he was the most famous poet of New England in the 19th century.

Longellow has always had a deep passion for latin languages: when he was just 19, he made a tour in Europe between France, Italy, Spain and Germany, taking 3 years. When he had the chance to visit our lake, he stopped in Griante, in the old fishermen’s hamlet of Cadenabbia. His experience here is multisensory: he feels the “gleams of sunshine” that shine “like torches” down his path; he hears the sound of the water “along the stony parapets”, and the bells that tinkle in syntony with the fishermen’s nets on the water.

In Longfellow’s words, the beauty of Lake Como is so unbelievably paradisiac that he’s worried it can fade away at any moment. Like all kinds of happiness in this life.

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
The silence of the summer day,
As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.
I pace the leafy colonnade
Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
Impervious to the sun and rain.
At times a sudden rush of air
Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread.
By Somariva's garden gate
I make the marble stairs my seat,
And hear the water, as I wait,
Lapping the steps beneath my feet.
The undulation sinks and swells
Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells
Tinkle upon the- fisher's nets.
Silent and slow, by tower and town
The freighted barges come and go,
Their pendent shadows gliding down
By town and tower submerged below.
The hills sweep upward from the shore
With villas scattered one by one
Upon their wooded spurs, and lower
Bellagio blazing in the sun.
And dimly seen, a tangled mass
Of walls and woods, of light and shade,
Stands beckoning up the Stelvio Pass
Varenna with its white cascade.
I ask myself, Is this a dream?
Will it all vanish into air-?
Is there a land of such supreme
And perfect beauty anywhere?
Sweel vision! Do not fade away;
Linger until my heart shall take
Into itself the summer day,
And all the, beauty of the lake.
Linger until upon my brain
Is stamped an image of the scene,
Then fade into the air again,
And be as if thou hadst not been.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon: “Thou, loveliest lake”

Lake Como for L.E.L (that was Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s secret literary pseudonym she used to publish her poems with) means melancholy: apparently she’s been there with one of her lovers with whom she broke up. We actually don’t know who that lover was (most probably, reading her biography, he was the critic John Forster); we just adore how in few verses L.E.L has been able to catch the most melancholic side of Lake Como, the one made of the lights reflecting on the water by night, with the “purple shadows” along the coasts: a shimmering yet faded landscape that perfectly matches with the author’s nostalgia for the time she was there with someone she used to love.

L.E.L was one of the most famous poets of the Pre-Victorian movement. As most of you probably know, she had a life with quite a lot of secrets that generated endless rumors, speculations, discussions, hype, mystery, and fame: Letitia became very soon the favorite protagonist of the tabloid newspapers.

L.E.L’s attitude was so out of the box, mysterious and irremediably free: here at Lakeside we love her, and we are proud to commemorate her on this special day with this little known poem “The Lake of Como” (from Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1837) set on the shores of our beloved lake.

I am beside the lake,
The lonely lake which used to be
The wide world of the beating heart
When I was, love, with thee.
I see the quiet evening lights
Amid the distant mountains shine;
I hear the music of a lute,
It used to come from thine.
How can another sing the song,
The sweet sad song that was thine own
It is alike, yet not the same,
It has not caught thy tone.
Ah, never other lip may catch
The sweetness round thine own that clung;
To me there is a tone unheard,
There is a chord unstrung.
Thou loveliest lake, I sought thy shores,
That dreams from other days might cast,
The presence elsewhere sought in vain,
The presence of the past.
I find the folly of the search,
Thou bringest but half the past again;
My pleasure calling faintly back
Too vividly my pain.
Too real the memories that haunt
The purple shadows round thy brink—
I only ask'd of thee to dream,
I did not ask to think.
False beauty haunting still my heart,
Though long since from that heart removed;
These waves but tell me how thou wert
Too well and vainly loved.
Fair lake, it is all vain to seek
The influence of thy lovely shore—
I ask of thee for hope and love—
They come to me no more.

Article by Laura Zanotta

Are you dreaming a retreat in the spots described in this article, like Cadenabbia? We can help you finding your new home on Lake Como!

Get in touch!

3 Poetries About Lake Como You Should Read on World Poetry Day

Wordsworth: Lake Como in his “Descriptive Sketches”

Longfellow, “Cadenabbia”: an incredible yet fragile beauty that can fade away at any moment

Letitia Elizabeth Landon: “Thou, loveliest lake”