THE

BROTHERS,

A PASTORAL POEM.

Vol. II.

B

The BROTHERS.*

These Tourists, Heaven preserve us ! needs must live
A profitable life: some glance along,

Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air,
And they were butterflies to wheel about
Long as their summer lasted; some, as wise,
Upon the forehead of a jutting crag

Sit perch'd with book and pencil on their knee,
And look and scribble, scribble on and look,
Until a man might travel twelve stout miles,
Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn.

This Poem was intended to be the concluding poem of a series of pastorals, the scene of which was laid among the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. I mention this to apologise for the abruptness with which the poem begins.

But, for that moping son of Idleness

Why can he tarry yonder ?—In our church-yard
Is neither epitaph nor monument,

Tomb-stone nor name, only the turf we tread,
And a few natural graves. To Jane, his Wife,
Thus spake the homely Priest of Ennerdale.
It was a July evening, and he sate
Upon the long stone-seat beneath the eaves
Of his old cottage, as it chanced that day,
Employ'd in winter's work. Upon the stone
His Wife sate near him, teasing matted wool,
While, from the twin cards tooth'd with glittering wire,
He fed the spindle of his youngest child,

Who turn'd her large round wheel in the open air

With back and forward steps. Towards the field
In which the parish chapel stood alone,
Girt round with a bare ring of mossy wall,

While half an hour went by, the Priest had sent

Many a long look of wonder, and at last,

Risen from his seat, beside the snowy ridge

Of carded wool which the old Man had piled
He laid his implements with gentle care,

Each in the other lock'd; and, down the path
Which from his cottage to the church-yard led,
He took his way, impatient to accost

The Stranger, whom he saw still lingering there.

'Twas one well known to him in former days,
A Shepherd-lad: who ere his thirteenth year
Had chang'd his calling, with the mariners
A fellow-mariner, and so had fared
Through twenty seasons; but he had been rear'd
Among the mountains, and he in his heart

Was half a Shepherd on the stormy seas.

Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard
The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds

Of caves and trees; and when the regular wind
Between the tropics fill'd the steady sail

And blew with the same breath through days and weeks,
Lengthening invisibly its weary line