Enoch Arden (tennyson)

 



Long narrative poem. 
Arresting. 
Cites a sailor’s life and testing. 
Took to bigger ships 
To catch the bigger pay. 
Wife and children, left behind. 
But no, never lost from mind. 
Even after shipwreck 
One cruel day. 
Three prevailed and washed ashore. 
But two died, survival lore 
Came to be the remedy 
For years alone. 
Paradise, it could have been. 
Sun and surf and foods and wind. 
But rescue, ah the rescue 
Was his song. 
Wake! 
A ship, a ship arrives 
With some weary foreign lives. 
And they take aboard the Castaway 
And hunger that is His 
But back home in England’s mist 
Enoch sad, avoids the Kiss. 
Wife and offspring, now 
To make a Miller’s bliss. 
Contact, none for conscience sake. 
And a hostel bed he makes 
With his Landlady, who cares 
For goodness sakes.

About this poem

Unquestionably my favourite narrative poem, followed by Evangeline (longfellow) and then The Wee Shop (service),

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