Page:Enoch Arden, etc - Tennyson - 1864.djvu/20

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4
ENOCH ARDEN.
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 men look’d upon him favourably:
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,