the lakes
- I Hate It Here / the lakes (Eras Tour, Cardiff)
“Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?I'm not cut out for all these cynical clonesThese hunters with cell phones…”
This is the song that launched The Swiftie and The Scholar podcast, Angela used these lyrics to convince Uncle Jerry to participate. Uncle Jerry identifies the song as a deliberate neo-Romantic poem that invokes the tenets of Romanticism as laid out in the Lyrical Ballads. The song is a bonus track on folklore. In the Long Pond Studio Sessions, Taylor discusses visiting Wordsworth's grave at St. Oswald's Church in Grasmere and acknowledges that the Lake Poets faced criticism similar to what she experiences. Community readers offer a reading of the song as folklore's thesis statement. The retreat it imagines follows the isolation of 2020, the pandemic and the fallout of her public cancellation, a kind of death of her public life as an entertainer that paradoxically frees her to be her authentic, artistic self. On this reading the muse is both her beloved and her true listeners, who are welcomed into the new world she is making rather than shut out of it. The hosts engaged with this reading in the episode's comments.
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the entire song as an expression of the desire to escape from the modern, technologically driven, critical world into the beauty and simplicity of nature. Uncle Jerry connects this directly to Romanticism's core tenet of retreating into nature as a refuge from industrialization and mechanized society, drawing parallels to the Lake Poets' own escape from advancing technological culture. Angela reinforces this by noting the song's 2020 context, the pandemic era when 'nobody was traveling' and escapism had to be built in the mind. Uncle Jerry connects it to Thoreau's Walden and Yeats' 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' as expressions of the same impulse toward simple living. Community readers add a reading of the phrasing itself. "Take me to the Lakes" is passive, a request rather than a plan: not "I am going" or "meet me there" but an appeal to be carried, as though the speaker lacks the agency or the energy to make the escape herself. The grammar deepens the song's melancholy, holding the longed-for refuge just out of her own reach.
Angela & Uncle Jerry read the song as a sustained response to criticism of Taylor's artistic work. Uncle Jerry identifies the opening line's irony, 'my elegies eulogize me', as Taylor addressing how her sad poems bring criticism and postmortems from others. Angela confirms this is what Taylor has been criticized for her 'whole life, her whole career', that 'all she does is write breakup songs.' Uncle Jerry admits his own initial reaction was the same ('All she does is just whine about breakups') and acknowledges being 'as guilty as anyone of looking at her poetry on a very surface level and belittling it.' The 'namedropping sleaze' is identified as likely Scooter Braun. Uncle Jerry draws a direct parallel between the criticism Taylor faces and the derogatory criticism the Lake Poets received, Francis Jeffrey called them 'the school of whining and hypocritical poets' and criticized them for 'radical misguided departure from established literary norms.' Uncle Jerry states: 'I think that's part of the attraction for Taylor Swift. They get labeled.'
Angela & Uncle Jerry read the song as an assertion of artistic perseverance, that beauty and art will emerge regardless of hostile conditions. Uncle Jerry reads the red rose through ice frozen ground as 'nature will force its way even through the ice and that beauty will emerge even through this wall of' criticism. Angela adds that Taylor is saying 'it doesn't matter what is going on. My art is still going to rise up out of me.' Uncle Jerry draws the explicit parallel to the Lake Poets: 'Just like the lake poets who faced a wall of discrimination because their political views, a wall of discrimination because their social views... just like them, I'm gonna persevere.' The song's final revelation that the 'muse' may be the audience, 'no, not without you', reinforces this as a statement about artistic purpose and continuation.
“Take me to the Lakes where all the poets went to die”
The Lakes function as the song's organising image, the literary-historical refuge the speaker asks to be taken to, and the geography against which the modernity she is fleeing (the hunters with cell phones, the namedropping sleaze) is implicitly measured.
“while I bathe in cliffside pools”
The cliffside pool extends The Lakes' refuge register to the speaker's own body, bathing in remote freshwater as physical inhabitation of the withdrawal the song proposes.
“I'm setting off, but not without my muse”
The muse operates on multiple levels, it could be a person (beloved), nature itself as inspiration (a Romantic tenet), Taylor's past work and artistic integrity, or her audience/listeners. Uncle Jerry reads it as deliberately ambiguous.
“A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground With no one around to tweet it”
The red rose forcing its way through ice frozen ground represents the emergence of beauty and art despite hostile conditions, Taylor's work persevering through criticism, paralleling the Lake Poets' perseverance through discrimination.
“I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet 'Cause I haven't moved in years”
Wisteria represents sadness and tears (its hanging, drooping form) and the speaker's desire for stillness and natural beauty to grow over her, to be absorbed into nature rather than participate in the modern world.
“A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground”
The ice frozen ground represents the hostile, cold environment of criticism and modern culture that Taylor (and the Lake Poets before her) must push through to create art. The cold is the barrier that beauty must overcome.
“These hunters with cell phones”
Cell phones represent the intrusion of modern technology into the speaker's life, the tools used by critics and 'cynical clones' to pursue and tear down artists. The technology stands in opposition to the natural, simple world of the lakes.
“A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss the vivid imagery of the red rose emerging from frozen ground at length. Uncle Jerry connects the rose to symbols of love, beauty, blood, and 'perfect imperfection,' and the ice to the Romantic tradition (citing Frankenstein's ice flows). He reads it as nature forcing its way through a wall of ice, beauty emerging through adversity, and the speaker's art rising despite opposition.
The image embodies the Romantic ideal of beauty emerging from harsh conditions, paralleling both the speaker's perseverance against critics and the Lake Poets' perseverance against cultural hostility.
“Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss the Windermere peaks as imagery evoking the actual beauty of the Lake District. Uncle Jerry says 'I don't think she's crying about the cynics... It's just a place to have to explore our emotions... to experience those feelings... the inward turning of the mind.'
The image of crying at the Windermere peaks connects the physical landscape to emotional release, embodying the Romantic principle that nature is the proper setting for the exploration of feeling.
“I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet 'Cause I haven't moved in years”
Angela & Uncle Jerry discuss the wisteria imagery, the sad, hanging, purple, fragrant climbing vine growing over the speaker's bare feet. Uncle Jerry notes that wisteria is 'often associated with sadness, symbolic of crying tears' and that the image conveys a desire for stillness and being overtaken by nature.
The wisteria image conveys the speaker's desire to be absorbed into nature, to stop performing for the world, and to simply exist, a core Romantic value of retreat into nature and the inward turning of the mind.
“Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the irony in this opening line: an elegy is a poem about death or sadness, and a eulogy is a funeral speech, so the speaker's sad poems are effectively giving her a funeral, her own work becomes the instrument of her public demise. Uncle Jerry calls this 'brilliant' irony, noting that the critics who trivialize her poetry as 'merely romantic' are themselves performing the eulogizing.
The irony establishes the song's central tension between the speaker's genuine poetic craft and the dismissive criticism she receives, mirroring the historical criticism the Lake Poets faced.
“Tell me what are my words worth”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the double entendre in 'words worth', on the surface it asks what her words are valued at, but it also encodes the name Wordsworth, the central Lake Poet. Angela notes that the lyric video may capitalize it as one word. Uncle Jerry calls it 'so fun' and says 'she's just too cute.'
The double entendre fuses the speaker's personal artistic struggle (the value of her poetry) with the literary tradition she aligns herself with (Wordsworth and the Lake Poets), collapsing autobiography and literary history into a single phrase.
“Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry note the alliteration with the S and Z sounds in this line alongside the assonance. Uncle Jerry identifies it as part of her demonstration of poetic skill.
The alliteration works alongside the assonance to prove the speaker's mastery of sound devices, reinforcing the irony of being dismissed as a lesser poet.
“I'm not cut out for all these cynical clones These hunters with cell phones”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify alliteration in 'cynical,' 'clones,' and 'cell' (the hard C/K sound), as well as the harsh sounds in 'cut' and 'clones.' Uncle Jerry explains that a good poet uses alliteration to demonstrate tone or emotion, here the harsh sounds describe harsh things: the critics who hunt her with their phones.
The harsh consonant sounds sonically enact the hostility of the critics and the technological intrusion the speaker is trying to escape, reinforcing the Romantic retreat from a mechanized, critical world.
“I don't belong and, my beloved, neither do you”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'my beloved' as a deliberate diction choice drawn from 19th-century Romantic vocabulary, citing Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnet 20 from Sonnets from the Portuguese). He says: 'It's a very 19th century, very romantic thing to say and do. So she's got the diction of romanticism.'
The archaic, Romantic diction of 'my beloved' signals the speaker's alignment with the literary tradition she is invoking, embedding the poem's Romantic identity into its word choices.
“I've come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze”
Uncle Jerry initially disliked the word 'sleaze' as too ugly and common, but then recognized it as a deliberate diction choice aligned with the Romantic principle of common language as articulated in the Lyrical Ballads preface. He says: 'I remembered, wait a minute, one of the hallmarks according to lyrical ballads. Common words.'
The deliberately common, even ugly diction of 'sleaze' enacts the Romantic commitment to common language, embedding the poem's argument about Romanticism into its word choices even when those choices feel jarring.
“Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the entire song as a neo-Romantic poem modelled on the principles laid out by Wordsworth and Coleridge in the Lyrical Ballads, common language, common people, and an inward turning of the mind. Uncle Jerry argues Taylor adopts all three tenets: her use of common modern language ('sleaze,' 'cell phones'), her focus on ordinary experience, and her confessional inward turning. The Lyrical Ballads preface is treated as the manifesto Taylor is consciously echoing.
“I don't belong and, my beloved, neither do you”
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify Taylor's use of 'my beloved' as a direct echo of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, specifically Sonnet 20 which addresses 'my beloved.' Uncle Jerry says this is a very 19th century, very Romantic form of address, and that Taylor has adopted the diction of Romanticism.
“I want auroras and sad prose”
Angela & Uncle Jerry connect Taylor's line 'I want auroras' to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's long biographical poem Aurora Leigh. Uncle Jerry notes the connection mid-discussion, saying 'I want auroras and sad prose, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes this long poem, Aurora Lee.' The Aurora figure operates both as a reference to EBB's poem and to Aurora as the goddess of morning light.
Angela & Uncle Jerry connect Taylor's statement in the Long Pond Sessions that she goes to the lakes 'in her head' to Wordsworth's poem about the daffodils (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud), in which Wordsworth says whenever he is in pensive mood in the city, he thinks of the daffodils. Uncle Jerry says this echoes the Romantic tenet of the inward turning of the mind, both Taylor and Wordsworth revisit nature mentally when they cannot be there physically.
“Take me to the Lakes, where all the poets went to die”
Angela & Uncle Jerry draw a direct thematic parallel between Taylor's 'Take me to the Lakes' and Yeats's Lake Isle of Innisfree, both poems express the desire to escape to a simple, natural place and live a quiet life. Uncle Jerry says the phrase 'take me to the lakes' makes him think of Yeats's poem about wanting a simple life on the Lake Isle of Innisfree with 'wattlemaid and nine bean rows.'
Romanticism
“A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground, with no one around to tweet it”
Angela ties New Romantics' we're the new romantics to the lakes, whose red rose grown out of frozen ground, with no one around to tweet it, makes the Romantic pose literal and solitary.
the wish to stay still
“'Cause I haven't moved in years”
“I never grew up, it's getting so old” — The Archer
Community readers set the lakes' wish for stillness against The Archer's anxious admission of arrested growth. Where The Archer frets that she never grew up and it is getting old, the lakes reframes the very same stuckness as something chosen, wisteria growing over feet that have not moved in years.
the dawn light
“I want auroras and sad prose”
“But it's golden, like daylight” — Daylight
Readers catch the older sense of "auroras" as the dawn, Aurora being the goddess of morning light, and hear it reaching towards Daylight. The lakes wants auroras and sad prose; Daylight arrives at the golden morning light the earlier word anticipates.
dwelling on what is past
“'Cause I haven't moved in years”
“In my defense, I have none, for digging up the grave another time” — the 1
Picked up by readers as part of the same pattern of dwelling. The lakes' refusal to move is answered in the 1 by the speaker who keeps digging up the grave another time, unable to leave the past where it lies.
the self-elegy
“Is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me?”
“And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake?” — my tears ricochet
Community readers connect the lakes' opening question to my tears ricochet, written in the same period, which stages the speaker's own funeral and watches the mourners at her wake. Both songs turn the elegy on its subject, the writer eulogising herself, so the lakes' line reads as a knowing gloss on the funeral she had already composed.
frozen in place
“'Cause I haven't moved in years”
“Help, I'm still at the restaurant” — right where you left me
Readers pair the lakes' chosen stillness with the frozen speaker of right where you left me, still sitting in the restaurant where she was left. The lakes wishes not to move; the later song shows what it costs to be unable to.
the refuge of the mind
“Take me to the Lakes, where all the poets went to die”
“I'll go to secret gardens in my mind” — I Hate It Here
Widely heard as a sister song to the lakes: both make a refuge of an imagined elsewhere entered in the mind. Where the lakes asks to be taken to the poets' landscape, I Hate It Here retreats to secret gardens of the imagination, the same flight from an unbearable present into a private interior world. The hosts took up the pairing in the episode.
fixed on what is out of reach
“'Cause I haven't moved in years”
“I'm addicted to the 'if only'” — I Look in People's Windows
Community readers fold the lakes into a longer thread about being held in place by longing. The speaker who has not moved in years sits alongside the later confession of being addicted to the "if only", both fixed by an attachment to a life just out of reach.
withdrawal and waiting
“'Cause I haven't moved in years”
“But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light” — Peter
Readers connect the lakes' unmoving speaker to Peter's woman by the window who has turned out the light, two images of withdrawal and waiting. The stillness the lakes romanticises returns in the later song as something quieter and sadder, a life held on hold.
release from stillness
“'Cause I haven't moved in years”
“you finally left the table” — Opalite
Community readers close the thread on a note of release. Against the lakes' speaker who has not moved in years, Opalite finally has her leave the table, the long stillness giving way to motion.
common language, the inward turning of the mind
“These hunters with cell phones”
“Everybody's so punk on the internet” — Eldest Daughter
Community readers connect the lakes' Romantic principle of common, modern language to Eldest Daughter's first verse. The everyday, almost uncomfortable diction the lakes licenses through Romanticism's tenet of plain speech returns, deliberately, in the later song's plain opening, a poetics of the common word turned inward.
the fantasy of a private refuge with the beloved
“Take me to the Lakes, where all the poets went to die”
“We tell the world to leave us the fuck alone / And they do, wow” — Wi$h Li$t
Readers hear Wi$h Li$t as a later companion to the lakes, the same daydream of slipping away to a quiet, private place with the one she loves while the world wants more of her. Neither escape is meant wholly literally; both stage the wish itself, the romance of disappearing together.
Novelist of manners, wit, and ironic romantic observation. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. Known for precisely observed social comedy and romantic intelligence.
Victorian English poet best known for Sonnets from the Portuguese, including the famous Sonnet 43 ('How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count the Ways').
English Romantic poet, author of The Prelude, known for lyrical poetry composed in the Lake District with Coleridge and his sister Dorothy.
Scottish Romantic poet best known for poems in Scots dialect including 'To a Mouse' and 'Auld Lang Syne.'
American film director known for The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and other films with strong visual imagery.
American Romantic author who wrote the Leatherstocking Tales, including The Last of the Mohicans.
Irish poet and Nobel laureate, author of The Lake Isle of Innisfree and other major works of the Irish literary revival.
English playwright and poet of the Elizabethan era, author of The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and major plays including Doctor Faustus.
English author best known for Frankenstein (1818), a foundational work of both the Romantic and Gothic literary traditions.
English essayist and author who, with his sister Mary Lamb, wrote Tales from Shakespeare. A visitor to the Lake District.
Scottish literary critic and editor of the Edinburgh Review who coined the derogatory label 'Lake Poets' and criticized the Romantic poets for their departure from established norms.
98.2
- Lyrical Strength
- 97
- Narrative & Structure
- 97
- Production & Atmosphere
- 98
- Lore & Literary References
- 100
- Emotional Impact
- 99