38
ENOCH ARDEN.
But finding neither light nor murmur there
(A bill of sale gleam’d thro’ the drizzle) crept
Still downward thinking ‘dead or dead to me!’
(A bill of sale gleam’d thro’ the drizzle) crept
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,
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;
A haunt of brawling sea men once, but now
Stiller, with yet a bed for wandering men.
There Enoch rested silent many days.
Seeking a tavern which of old he knew,
A front of timber-crost antiquity,
So propt, worm-eaten, ruinously old,
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;
A haunt of brawling sea men once, but now
Stiller, with yet a bed for wandering men.
There Enoch rested silent many days.
But Miriam Lane was good and garrulous,
Nor let him be, but often breaking in,
Told him, with other annals of the port,
Not knowing—Enoch was so brown, so bow’d,
So broken—all the story of his house.
Nor let him be, but often breaking in,
Told him, with other annals of the port,
Not knowing—Enoch was so brown, so bow’d,
So broken—all the story of his house.
