Page:Enoch Arden, etc - Tennyson - 1864.djvu/55

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ENOCH ARDEN.
39
His baby’s death, her growing poverty,
How Philip put her little ones to school,
And kept them in it, his long wooing her,
Her slow consent, and marriage, and the birth
Of Philip’s child: and o’er his countenance
No shadow past, nor motion: any one,
Regarding, well had deem’d he felt the tale
Less than the teller: only when she closed
‘Enoch, poor man, was cast away and lost’
He, shaking his gray head pathetically,
Repeated muttering ‘cast away and lost;’
Again in deeper inward whispers ‘lost!’

But Enoch yearn’d to see her face again;
‘If I might look on her sweet face again
And know that she is happy.’ So the thought
Haunted and harass’d him, and drove him forth,
At evening when the dull November day
Was growing duller twilight, to the hill.
There he sat down gazing on all below;