The Project Gutenberg EBook of Enoch Arden, &c., by Alfred Tennyson

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Title: Enoch Arden, &c.

Author: Alfred Tennyson

Posting Date: January 27, 2010 [EBook #1358] Release Date: June, 1998

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENOCH ARDEN, &C. ***

Produced by Stewart A. Levin

ENOCH ARDEN, &c.

by ALFRED TENNYSON.

CONTENTS

  Enoch Arden
  Aylmer's Field
  Sea Dreams
  The Grandmother
  Northern Farmer
  Miscellaneous.
      Tithonus
      The Voyage
      In the Valley of Cauteretz
      The Flower
      Requiescat
      The Sailor-Boy
      The Islet
      The Ringlet
      A Welcome to Alexandra
      Ode sung at the Opening of the
         International Exhibition
      A Dedication
  Experiments.
      Boadicea
      In Quantity
      Specimen of a Translation of
         the Iliad in Blank Verse

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. Philip look'd,
  And in their eyes and faces read his doom;
  Then, as their faces drew together, groan'd,
  And slipt aside, and like a wounded life
  Crept down into the hollows of the wood;
  There, while the rest were loud in merrymaking,
  Had his dark hour unseen, and rose and past
  Bearing a lifelong hunger in his heart.

    So these were wed, and merrily rang the bells,
  And merrily ran the years, seven happy years,
  Seven happy years of health and competence,
  And mutual love and honorable toil;
  With children; first a daughter. In him woke,
  With his first babe's first cry, the noble wish
  To save all earnings to the uttermost,
  And give his child a better bringing-up
  Than his had been, or hers; a wish renew'd,
  When two years after came a boy to be
  The rosy idol of her solitudes,
  While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas,
  Or often journeying landward; for in truth
  Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil
  In ocean-smelling osier, and his face,
  Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales,
  Not only to the market-cross were known,
  But in the leafy lanes behind the down,
  Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp,
  And peacock-yewtree of the lonely Hall,
  Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering.

    Then came a change, as all things human change.
  Ten miles to northward of the narrow port
  Open'd a larger haven: thither used
  Enoch at times to go by land or sea;
  And once when there, and clambering on a mast
  In harbor, by mischance he slipt and fell:
  A limb was broken when they lifted him;
  And while he lay recovering there, his wife
  Bore him another son, a sickly one:
  Another hand crept too across his trade
  Taking her bread and theirs: and on him fell,
  Altho' a grave and staid God-fearing man,
  Yet lying thus inactive, doubt and gloom.
  He seem'd, as in a nightmare of the night,
  To see his children leading evermore
  Low miserable lives of hand-to-mouth,
  And her, he loved, a beggar: then he pray'd
  'Save them from this, whatever comes to me.'
  And while he pray'd, the master of that