Enoch Arden was an able
Seaman; hear of his mishap—
Not in wild mendacious fable,
As ‘t was told by t’
other chap;
For I hold it is a youthful
Indiscretion to tell lies,
And the writer that is truthful
Has the reader that is wise.
Enoch Arden, able seaman,
On an isle was cast away,
And before he was a freeman
Time had touched him up with
gray.
Long he searched the fair horizon,
Seated on a mountain top;
Vessel ne’er he set his eyes on
That would undertake to stop.
Seeing that his sight was growing
Dim and dimmer, day by day,
Enoch said he must be going.
So he rose and went away—
Went away and so continued
Till he lost his lonely isle:
Mr. Arden was so sinewed
He could row for many a mile.
Compass he had not, nor sextant,
To direct him o’er the
sea:
Ere ’t was known that he was extant,
At his widow’s home
was he.
When he saw the hills and hollows
And the streets he could but
know,
He gave utterance as follows
To the sentiments below:
“Blast my tarry toplights! (shiver,
Too, my timbers!) but, I say,
W’at a larruk to diskiver,
I have lost me blessid way!
“W’at, alas, would be my bloomin’
Fate if Philip now I see,
Which I lammed?—or my old ’oman,
Which has frequent basted
me?”
Scenes of childhood swam around him
At the thought of such a lot:
In a swoon his Annie found him
And conveyed him to her cot.
’T was the very house, the garden,
Where their honeymoon was
passed:
’T was the place where Mrs. Arden
Would have mourned him to
the last.
Ah, what grief she’d known without
him!
Now what tears of joy she
shed!
Enoch Arden looked about him:
“Shanghaied!”—that
was all he said.
DISAVOWAL.
Two bodies are lying in Phoenix Park,
Grim and bloody and stiff and stark,
And a Land League man with averted eye
Crosses himself as he hurries by.
And he says to his conscience under his
breath:
“I have had no hand in this deed
of death!”
A Fenian, making a circuit wide
And passing them by on the other side,
Shudders and crosses himself and cries:
“Who says that I did it, he lies,
he lies!”
Gingerly stepping across the gore,
Pat Satan comes after the two before,
Makes, in a solemnly comical way,
The sign of the cross and is heard to
say:
“O dear, what a terrible sight to
see,
For babes like them and a saint like me!”
1882.
