the mill, the leafy lanes,
The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall,
The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill
November dawns and dewy glooming of the downs,
The gentle shower, _the smell of dying leaves_,
And the low moan of leaden-colored seas."

We know of no more perfect rendering of an unlearned and trustful faith
in God than this which Tennyson puts in the mouth of Enoch as he departs
on the voyage from which he never returns to his wife:--

"If you fear,
Cast all your fears on God: that anchor holds.
Is He not yonder in those uttermost
Parts of the morning? if I flee to these,
Can I go from Him? And the sea is His,
The sea is His: He made it."

In the repetition in the last line one can almost hear the sob welling
up from the heart of the strong sailor, as he speaks of God to one
beloved, in time of trial,--the feeling of bitterness in parting
starting with the impulse of the stronger faith.

In "Enoch Arden," as in "In Memoriam," Tennyson shows the sweet and sure
sympathy which informs him of all the ways of grief. In its sacred
experiences, where the slightest variance from the simplicity of actual
feeling would jostle all, he holds his way unquestioned.

It is a test, unembarrassed and complete, of genius, this treatment of
grief, the emotion which least of all brooks exaggeration or
sentimentalism. It is the test of human purity, too, and the hand must
be very tender and very clean which leaves thus exact and clear the
picture of the crowning phase of human life. If "In Memoriam" has
appropriated to itself, by its sublime supremacy, a phrase which, though
in daily use, is never heard without suggesting the poem, Tennyson shows
in "Enoch Arden" that he understands the sad and perfect reign of grief
in the life of the sailor and of the sailor's wife struck with a great
sorrow for the loss of the latest born, as well as in the broad and
varied range of his own cultured nature.

Coupled with the knowledge of grief is this of prayer,--"that mystery
when God in man is one with man-in-God,"--which is said when Enoch had
resolved to surrender his Annie rather than to break in upon her
happiness:--

"His resolve
Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore
Prayer, from a living source within the will,
And beating up through all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul."

And so we close th