Suddenly set it wide to find a sign,

Suddenly put her finger on the text,

"Under the palm-tree." That was nothing to her: No meaning there: she closed the Book and slept: When lo! her Enoch sitting on a height,

Under a palm-tree, over him the Sun:

"He is gone," she thought, "he is happy, he is singing

Hosanna in the highest: yonder shines

The Sun of Righteousness, and these be palms Whereof the happy people strowing cried 'Hosanna in the highest!"" Here she woke, Resolved, sent for him and said wildly to him, "There is no reason why we should not wed." "Then for God's sake," he answer'd, "both our sakes,

So you will wed me, let it be at once."

So these were wed and merrily rang the bells,
Merrily rang the bells and they were wed.
But never merrily beat Annie's heart.

A footstep seem'd to fall beside her path,
She knew not whence; a whisper on her ear,
She knew not what; nor loved she to be left
Alone at home, nor ventured out alone.
What ail'd her then, that ere she enter'd, often,
Her hand dwelt lingeringly on the latch,
Fearing to enter: Philip thought he knew:

Such doubts and fears were common to her state, Annie, since the days of the Puritans. In George Eliot's Adam Bede, Dinah Morris makes important use of the practice. "And when I've opened the Bible for direction," she says, "I've always lighted on some clear word to tell me where my work lay."

1 Judges iv. 5.

Being with child: but when her child was born,
Then her new child was as herself renew'd,
Then the new mother came about her heart,
Then her good Philip was her all-in-all,
And that mysterious instinct wholly died.

And where was Enoch? prosperously sail'd
The ship Good Fortune, tho' at setting forth
The Biscay, roughly ridging eastward, shook
And almost overwhelm'd her, yet unvext
She slipt across the summer of the world,'
Then after a long tumble about the Cape
And frequent interchange of foul and fair,
She passing thro' the summer world again,
The breath of heaven came continually
And sent her sweetly by the golden isles,
Till silent in her oriental haven.

There Enoch traded for himself, and bought Quaint monsters for the market of those times, A gilded dragon, also, for the babes.

3

Less lucky her home-voyage: at first indeed' Thro' many a fair sea-circle, day by day, Scarce-rocking her full-busted figure-head Stared o'er the ripple feathering from her bows : Then follow'd calms, and then winds variable, Then baffling, a long course of them; and last Storm, such as drove her under moonless heavens Till hard upon the cry of "breakers came

1 This of course refers to the region about the equator. & Voyage here is more nearly one syllable.

There is a constant impression at sea of being at the centre of a vast circle.

The crash of ruin, and the loss of all

But Enoch and two others. Half the night,
Buoy'd upon floating tackle and broken spars,
These drifted, stranding on an isle at morn
Rich, but the loneliest in a lonely sea.

No want was there of human sustenance, Soft fruitage, mighty nuts, and nourishing roots; Nor save for pity was it hard to take

The helpless life so wild that it was tame.

There in a seaward-gazing mountain-gorge

They 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 stem1;
And Enoch's comrade, careless of himself,
Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fell
Sun-stricken, and that other lived alone.

In those two deaths he read God's warning, "Wait."

The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, The lightning flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows

1 Stem, a tree-trunk of which they tried to make a canoe.

And glories of the broad belt of the world,1
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd
And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail :
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east:
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;

Then the great stars that globed themselves in
Heaven,

The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise- but no sail.

There often as he watch'd or seem'd to watch, So still, the golden lizard on him paused,' A phantom made of many phantoms moved Before him, haunting him, or he himself Moved haunting people, things and places, known Far in a darker isle beyond the line;

The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house, The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes,

1 Broad belt of the world, the ocean; the ancients, indeed, had such a conception of it.

* So much was he a part of nature.

The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall,
The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill
November dawns and dewy-glooming downs,
The gentle shower, the smell of dying leaves,
And the low moan of leaden-color'd seas.

Once likewise, in the ringing of his ears, Tho' faintly, merrily - far and far awayHe 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
With clamor. Downward from his mountain gorge
Stept the long-hair'd, long-bearded solitary,
Brown, looking hardly human, strangely clad,

Muttering and mumbling, idiot-like it seem'd,