Page:Enoch Arden, etc - Tennyson - 1864.djvu/47

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ENOCH ARDEN.
31
 No want was there of human sustenance,Soft fruitage, mighty nuts, and nourishing roots;Nor save for pity was it hard to takeThe helpless life so wild that it was tame.There in a seaward-gazing mountain-gorgeThey 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,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,Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fellSun-stricken, and that other lived alone.In those two deaths he read God’s warning ‘wait.’
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