There Enoch spoke no word to any one, But homeward--home--what home? had he a home? His home, he walk'd. Bright was that afternoon, 665 Sunny but chill; till drawn thro' either chasm, Where either haven open'd on the deeps, Roll'd a sea-haze and whelm'd the world in gray; Cut off the length of highway on before, And left but narrow breadth to left and right 670 Of wither'd holt[220] or tilth[221] or pasturage. On the nigh-naked tree the robin piped Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping haze The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it down: Thicker the drizzle grew, deeper the gloom; 675 Last, as it seem'd, a great mist-blotted light Flared on him, and he came upon the place. Then down the long street having slowly stolen, His heart foreshadowing all calamity, His eyes upon the stones, he reach'd the home 680 Where Annie lived and loved him, and his babes In those far-off seven happy years were born; But finding neither light nor murmur there (A bill of sale gleam'd thro' the drizzle) crept Still downward thinking, "dead, or dead to me!" 685 Down to the pool and narrow wharf he went, Seeking a tavern which of old he knew, A front of timber-crost antiquity, So propt, worm-eaten, ruinously old, He thought it must have gone; but he was gone 690 Who kept it; and his widow, Miriam Lane, With daily-dwindling profits held the house; A haunt of brawling seamen once, but now Stiller, with yet a bed for wandering men. There Enoch rested silent many days. 695 But Miriam Lane was good and garrulous, Nor let him be, but often breaking in, Told him, with other annals of the port, Not knowing--Enoch was so brown, so bow'd, So broken--all the story of his house. 700 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 705 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, 710 Repeated muttering, "cast away and lost;" Again in deeper inward whispers, "lost!"