545 The crash of ruin, and the loss of all

550

But Enoch and two others. Half the night,
Buoy'd upon floating tackle and broken spars,
These drifted, stranding on an isle at morn
Rich, but the loneliest in a lonely sea.

No want was there of human sustenance,

Soft fruitage, mighty nuts, and nourishing roots; Nor save for pity was it hard to take

The helpless life so wild that it was tame.

There in a seaward-gazing mountain-gorge

555 They built, and thatch'd with leaves of palm, a hut,
Half hut, half native cavern. So the three,
Set in this Eden of all plenteousness,
Dwelt with eternal summer, ill-content.

For one, the youngest, hardly more than boy,
560 Hurt in that night of sudden ruin and wreck,
Lay lingering out a five-years' death-in-life.
They could not leave him. After he was gone,
The two remaining found a fallen stem;
And Enoch's comrade, careless of himself,
565 Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fell
Sun-stricken, and that other lived alone.

In those two deaths he read God's warning, "Wait."

The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, 570 The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, The lightning flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows

563. Stem, a tree-trunk of which they tried to make a canoe

675 And glories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face,

Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, 60 The league-long roller thundering on the reef, The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 585 Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among the palms and ferns and precipices; 500 The blaze upon the waters to the east: The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,

The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again

395 The scarlet shafts of sunrise

but no sail.

There often as he watch'd or seem'd to watch, So still, the golden lizard on him paused, A phantom made of many phantoms moved Before him, haunting him, or he himself

600 Moved haunting people, things and places, known Far in a darker isle beyond the line;

The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house,
The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes,

575. Broad belt of the world, the ocean; the ancients, indeed, had such a conception of it.

527. So much was he a part of nature.

The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall,
805 The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill
November dawns and dewy-glooming downs,
The gentle shower, the smell of dying leaves,
And the low moan of leaden-color'd seas.

Once likewise, in the ringing of his ears, o Tho' faintly, merrily-far and far awayHe heard the pealing of his parish bells; Then, tho' he knew not wherefore, started up Shuddering, and when the beauteous hateful isle Return'd upon him, had not his poor heart 45 Spoken with That, which being everywhere Lets none who speaks with Him seem all alone, Surely the man had died of solitude.

Thus over Enoch's early-silvering head The sunny and rainy seasons came and went €20 Year after year. His hopes to see his own, And pace the sacred old familiar fields, Not yet had perish'd, when his lonely doom Came suddenly to an end. Another ship (She wanted water) blown by baffling winds, 625 Like the Good Fortune, from her destined course, Stay'd by this isle, not knowing where she lay: For since the mate had seen at early dawn Across a break on the mist-wreathen isle The silent water slipping from the hills,

630 They sent a crew that landing burst away

In search of stream or fount, and fill'd the shores
With clamor. Downward from his mountain gorge
Stept the long-hair'd, long-bearded solitary,
Brown, looking hardly human, strangely clad,

Muttering and mumbling, idiot-like it seem'd,

With inarticulate rage, and making signs

They knew not what: and yet he led the way
To where the rivulets of sweet water ran;
And ever as he mingled with the crew,

640 And heard them talking, his long-bounden tongue Was loosen'd, till he made them understand; Whom, when their casks were fill'd they took aboard

And there the tale he utter'd brokenly,
Scarce-credited at first but more and more,

645 Amazed and melted all who listen'd to it;
And clothes they gave him and free passage home;
But oft he work'd among the rest and shook
His isolation from him. None of these

Came from his county, or could answer him,
650 If question'd, aught of what he cared to know.
And dull the voyage was with long delays,
The vessel scarce sea-worthy; but evermore
His fancy fled before the lazy wind
Returning, till beneath a clouded moon
655 He like a lover down thro' all his blood

Drew in the dewy meadowy morning-breath
Of England, blown across her ghostly wall:
And that same morning officers and men
Levied a kindly tax upon themselves,
360 Pitying the lonely man, and gave him it:

Then moving up the coast they landed him,
Ev'n in that harbor whence he sail'd before.

There Enoch spoke no word to any one, But homeward - home

home?

638. Sweet water, not salt.

651. Voyage, two syllables again.

what home? had he a

657. Her ghostly wall, the chalk cliffs of the south coast.

665 His home, he walk'd. Bright was that afternoon,
Sunny but chill; till drawn thro' either chasm,
Where either haven open'd on the deeps,
Roll'd a sea-haze and whelm'd the world in gray;
Cut off the length of highway on before,
670 And left but narrow breadth to left and right
Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage.

On the nigh-naked tree the robin piped
Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping haze
The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it down:
675 Thicker the drizzle grew, deeper the gloom;
Last, as it seem'd, a great mist-blotted light
Flared on him, and he came upon the place.

Then down the long street having slowly stolen, His heart foreshadowing all calamity, 680 His eyes upon the stones, he reach'd the home Where Annie lived and loved him, and his babes In those far-off seven happy years were born; But finding neither light nor murmur there (A bill of sale gleam'd thro' the drizzle) crept 685 Still downward thinking, "dead, or dead to me!"

Down to the pool and narrow wharf he went,
Seeking a tavern which of old he knew,
A front of timber-crost antiquity,

So propt, worm-eaten, ruinously old,

690 He thought it must have gone; but he was gone Who kept it; and his widow, Miriam Lane,

With daily-dwindling profits held the house;

667. See line 102.

688. A house of plaster crossed with timbers, "half-timbered "as it is called; a style of architecture made familiar by the pictures of Shakespeare's birthplace.