Page:Enoch Arden, etc - Tennyson - 1864.djvu/51

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ENOCH ARDEN.
35
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 dawnAcross a break on the mist-wreathen isleThe silent water slipping from the hills,They sent a crew that landing burst awayIn search of stream or fount, and fill’d the shoresWith clamour. Downward from his mountain gorgeStept 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 signsThey knew not what: and yet he led the wayTo where the rivulets of sweet water ran;And ever as he mingled with the crew,And heard them talking, his long-bounden tongueWas 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,
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