There were two Springs which bubbled side by side,
As if they had been made that they might be
Companions for each other: ten years back,
Close to those brother fountains, the huge crag
Was rent with lightning-one is dead and gone,
The other, left behind, is flowing still.-
For accidents and changes such as these,
Why, we have store of them! a water-spout
Will bring down half a mountain; what a feast
For folks that wander up and down like you
To see an acre's breadth of that wide cliff
One roaring cataract !—a sharp May storm
Will come with loads of January snow,

And in one night send twenty score of sheep
To feed the ravens; or a Shepherd dies
By some untoward death among the rocks:
The ice breaks up and sweeps away a bridge-
A wood is felled:-and then for our own homes!
A Child is born or christened, a Field ploughed,

A Daughter sent to service, a Web spun,

The old House-clock is decked with a new face;

And hence, so far from wanting facts or dates

To chronicle the time, we all have here

A pair of diaries, one serving, Sir,

For the whole dale, and one for each fire-side

Yours was a stranger's judgment: for Historians, Commend me to these valleys.

LEONARD.

Yet your Church-yard

Seems, if such freedom may be used with you,
To say that you are heedless of the past.

An orphan could not find his mother's grave:
Here's neither head- nor foot-stone, plate of brass,
Cross-bones or skull, type of our earthly state
Or emblem of our hopes: the dead man's home
Is but a fellow to that pasture-field.

PRIEST.

Why, there, Sir, is a thought that's new to me.

The Stone-cutters, 'tis true, might beg their bread.

If every English Church-yard were like ours;

8

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 mountains.
LEONARD.

Your Dalesmen, then, do in each other's thoughts

Possess a kind of second life: no doubt

You, Sir, could help me to the history

Of half these Graves?

PRIEST.

For eight-score winters past,

With what I've witnessed, and with what I've

heard,

Perhaps I might; and, on a winter's 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 high-way 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.

LEONARD.

"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.

PRIEST.

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.
For 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 buffeted 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 him

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 in these rough paths
Even in the longest day of midsummer-

LEONARD.

But these two Orphans!

PRIEST.

Orphans! Such they were: