Another tweak of the ol' Mental Model

Howdy All,  I am once again (no big surprise here) puzzled about some RecDescent
behaviour.  Would anyone care to attempt to explain in small words why the
following snippet won't parse?
--------------------------
use Parse::RecDescent;
my $parse = Parse::RecDescent->new(join '', <DATA>) or die "Bad Grammar!";

my $text = "a\nb\nc\nd\n";

my $x = $parse->lines($text);
if ($x)
{
     print "x=$x $text parsed successfully!\n";
}
else
{
     print "$text is NOT parsable!!\n";
}
__DATA__

lines: /a|b|c|d/ EOL {print "line $item[0]\n"; 1}

EOL: /\n/ {1}
--------------------------

Thanks again for taking pity on the unenlightened! :-)

Ken