Enoch Arden, &c.

Excerpt

ENOCH ARDEN.

  Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
  And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
  Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
  In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher
  A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill;
  And high in heaven behind it a gray down
  With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood,
  By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
  Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.

    Here on this beach a hundred years ago,
  Three children of three houses, Annie Lee,
  The prettiest little damsel in the port,
  And Philip Ray the miller's only son,
  And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad
  Made orphan by a winter shipwreck, play'd
  Among the waste and lumber of the shore,
  Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing-nets,
  Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats updrawn,
  And built their castles of dissolving sand
  To watch them overflow'd, or following up
  And flying the white breaker, daily left
  The little footprint daily wash'd away.

    A narrow cave ran in beneath the cliff:
  In this the children play'd at keeping house.
  Enoch was host one day, Philip the next,
  While Annie still was mistress; but at times
  Enoch would hold possession for a week:
  'This is my house and this my little wife.'
  'Mine too' said Philip 'turn and turn about:'
  When, if they quarrell'd, Enoch stronger-made
  Was master: then would Philip, his blue eyes
  All flooded with the helpless wrath of tears,
  Shriek out 'I hate you, Enoch,' and at this
  The little wife would weep for company,
  And pray them not to quarrel for her sake,
  And say she would be little wife to both.

    But when the dawn of rosy childhood past,
  And the new warmth of life's ascending sun
  Was felt by either, either fixt his heart
  On that one girl; and Enoch spoke his love,
  But Philip loved in silence; and the girl
  Seem'd kinder unto Philip than to him;
  But she loved Enoch; tho' she knew it not,
  And would if ask'd deny it. Enoch set
  A purpose evermore before his eyes,
  To hoard all savings to the uttermost,
  To purchase his own boat, and make a home
  For Annie: and so prosper'd that at last
  A luckier or a bolder fisherman,
  A carefuller in peril, did not breathe
  For leagues along that breaker-beaten coast
  Than Enoch. Likewise had he served a year
  On board a merchantman, and made himself
  Full sailor; and he thrice had pluck'd a life
  From the dread sweep of the down-streaming seas:
  And all me look'd upon him favorably:
  And ere he touch'd his one-and-twentieth May
  He purchased his own boat, and made a home
  For Annie, neat and nestlike, halfway up
  The narrow street that clamber'd toward the mill.

    Then, on a golden autumn eventide,
  The younger people making holiday,
  With bag and sack and basket, great and small,
  Went nutting to the hazels. Philip stay'd
  (His father lying sick and needing him)
  An hour behind; but as he climb'd the hill,
  Just where the prone edge of the wood began
  To feather toward the hollow, saw the pair,
  Enoch and Annie, sitting hand-in-hand,
  His large gray eyes and weather-beaten face
  All-kindled by a still and sacred fire,
  That burn'd as on an altar....