The gentle shower, the smell of dying leaves.

And the low moan of leaden-colour'd seas.

Once likewise, in the ringing of his ears, Tho' faintly, merrily-far and far away— He 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

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
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,

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,

They sent a crew that landing burst away

In search of stream or fount, and fill'd the shores Downward from his mountain gorge

With clamour.

Stept the long-hair'd long-bearded solitary,
Brown, looking hardly human, strangely clad,
Muttering and mumbling, idiotlike 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,

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,

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,
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
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,
Pitying the lonely man, and gave him it :
Then moving up the coast they landed him,
Ev'n in that harbour whence he sail'd before.

There Enoch spoke no word to anyone,

But homeward-home-what home? had he a home?

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,

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 :
Thicker the drizzle grew, deeper the gloom;
Last, as it seem'd, a great mist-blotted light
the place.

Flared on him, and he came upon

Then down the long street having slowly stolen,

His heart foreshadowing all calamity,

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 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 seamen 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.