Enoch Arden etc Author:Alfred Tennyson Tennyson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SEA DREAMS. A City clerk, but gently born and bred ; His wife, an unknown artist's orphan child— One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old : They, thin... more »king that her clear germander eye Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom, Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea ; For which his gains were dock'd, however small: Small were his gains, and hard his work ; besides, Their slender household fortunes (for the man Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift, Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep : And oft, when sitting all alone, his face Would darken, as he cursed his credulousuess, And that one unctuous mouth which lured him, rogue, To buy strange shares in some Peruvian mine. Now seaward-bound for health they gain'd a coast, All sand and cliff and deep-inrunning cave, At close of day ; slept, woke, and went the next, The Sabbath, pious variers from the church, To chapel; where a heated pulpiteer, Not preaching simple Christ to simple men, Announced the coming doom, and fulminated Against the scarlet woman and her creed : For sideways up he swung his arms, and shriek'd ' Thus, thus with violence,' ev'n as if he held The Apocalyptic millstone, and himself Were that great Angel; ' Thus with violence Shall Babylon be cast into the sea ; Then comes the close.' The gentle-hearted wife Sat shuddering at the ruin of a world ; He at his own : but when the wordy storm Had ended, forth they came and paced the shore, Ran in and out the long sea-framing caves, Drank the large air, and saw, but scarce believed (The sootflake of so many a summer still Clung to their fancies) that they saw, the sea. So now on sand they walk'd, and now on cliff, Lingering about the thymy promontories, Till all the sails were dar...« less