The thought of death sits easy on the manWho 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.
With what I’ve witness’d; 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 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.
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 churchyard wall.
PRIEST.
That’s Walter Ewbank.
He had as white a head and fresh a cheek
As ever were produc’d by youth and age
Engendering in the blood of hale fourscore.
For five long generations had the heart
Of Walter’s forefathers o’erflow’d the bounds
Of their inheritance, that single cottage,
You see it yonder, and those few green fields.
They toil’d 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 preserv’d
A chearful 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 spurr’d 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 —
Yet not while Walter liv’d — for, though their Parents
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 talk’d of them where they were not,
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!
Aye. You may turn that way — it is a grave
Which will bear looking at.
LEONARD.
These Boys I hope
They lov’d this good old Man —
PRIEST.
They did — and truly,
But that was what we almost overlook’d,
They were such darlings of each other. For
Though from their cradles they had liv’d with Walter,
The only kinsman near them in the house,
Yet he being old, they 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
Was distant three short miles, and in the time
Of storm and thaw, when every water-course
And unbridg’d stream, such as you may have notic’d
Crossing our roads at every hundred steps,
Was swoln into a noisy rivulet,
Would Leonard then, when elder boys perhaps
Remain’d at home, go staggering through the fords
Bearing his Brother on his back. — I’ve seen him,
On windy days, in one of those stray brooks,
Aye, more than once I’ve seen him mid-leg deep,
Their two books lying both on a dry stone
