Yet your conclusion wanders from the truth:
We have no need of names and epitaphs;
We talk about the dead by our fire-sides.
And then, for our immortal part! we want
No symbols, Sir, to tell us that plain tale :
The thought of death sits easy on the man
Who has been born and dies among the moun-
tains.
Your Dalesmen, then, do in each other's
Possess a kind of second life: no doubt
You, Sir, could help me to the history
Of half these graves?
For eight-score winters past,
With what I've witnessed, and with what I've
Perhaps I might; and, on a winter-evening,
If you were seated at my chimney's nook,
By turning o'er these hillocks one by one,
We two could travel, Sir, through a strange
round;
Yet all in the broad highway of the world.
Now there's a grave-your foot is half upon it,-
It looks just like the rest; and yet that man
Died broken-hearted.
'Tis a common case.
We'll take another: who is he that lies
Beneath yon ridge, the last of those three graves?
It touches on that piece of native rock
Left in the church-yard wall.
That's Walter Ewbank.
He had as white a head and fresh a cheek
As ever were produced by youth and age
Engendering in the blood of hale fourscore.
Through five long generations had the heart
Of Walter's forefathers o'erflowed the bounds
Of their inheritance, that single cottage-
You see it yonder !-and those few green fields.
They toiled and wrought, and still, from sire to
son,
Each struggled, and each yielded as before
A little yet a little-and old Walter,
They left to him the family heart, and land
With other burthens than the crop it bore.
Year after year the old man still kept up
A cheerful mind, and buffetted with bond,
Interest, and mortgages: at last he sank,
And went into his grave before his time.
Poor Walter whether it was care that spurred
God only knows, but to the very last
He had the lightest foot in Ennerdale :
His pace was never that of an old man:
I almost see him tripping down the path
With his two grandsons after him :-but you,
Unless our Landlord be your host to-night,
Have far to travel,-and on these rough paths
Even in the longest day of midsummer-
Orphans !-Such they were
Yet not while Walter lived :-for, though their
Lay buried side by side as now they lie,
The old man was a father to the boys,
Two fathers in one father: and if tears,
Shed when he talked of them where they were
And hauntings from the infirmity of love,
Are aught of what makes up a mother's heart,
This old man, in the day of his old age,
Was half a mother to them.-If you weep, sir,
To hear a stranger talking about strangers,
Heaven bless you when you are among your
kindred!
Ay-you may turn that way-it is a grave
Which will bear looking at.
They loved this good old Man!
But that was what we almost overlooked,
They were such darlings of each other. Yes,
Though from the cradle they had lived with
Walter,
The only kinsman near them, and though he
Inclined to both by reason of his age,
With a more fond, familiar tenderness,
They, notwithstanding, had much love to spare,
And it all went into each other's hearts.
Leonard, the elder by just eighteen months,
Was two years taller: 'twas a joy to see,
To hear, to meet them!-From their house the
school
Is distant three short miles-and in the time
Of storm and thaw, when every water-course
And unbridged stream, such as you may have
noticed
Crossing our roads at every hundred steps,
Was swoln into a noisy rivulet,
Would Leonard then, when elder boys remained
At home, go staggering through the slippery
Bearing his Brother on his back. I have seen
On windy days, in one of those stray brooks, Ay, more than once I have seen him, mid-leg deep,
Their two books lying both on a dry stone,
Upon the hither side: and once I said,
As I remember, looking round these rocks
And hills on which we all of us were born,
That God who made the great book of the
world
Would bless such piety
Never did worthier lads break English bread;
The very brightest Sunday Autumn saw
With all its mealy clusters of ripe nuts,
Could never keep those boys away from church,
Or tempt them to an hour of sabbath breach.
Leonard and James! I warrant, every corner
Among these rocks, and every hollow place
That venturous foot could reach, to one or both
Was known as well as to the flowers that grow
there.
Like roe-bucks they went bounding o'er the hills;
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