By this the Priest, who down the field had come, Unseen by Leonard, at the church-yard gate Stopped short, and thence, at leisure, limb by limb Perused him with a gay complacency.

Aye, thought the Vicar, smiling to himself,
'Tis one of those who needs must leave the path,
Of the world's business to go wild alone:
His arms have a perpetual holiday;

The happy man will creep about the fields,
Following his fancies by the hour, to bring
Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles
Into his face, until the setting sun

Write fool upon his forehead.-Planted thus
Beneath a shed that over-arched the gate
Of this rude church-yard, till the stars appeared
The good Man might have communed with himself,
But that the Stranger, who had left the grave,
Approached; he recognised the Priest at once,
And, after greetings interchanged, and given
By Leonard to the Vicar as to one

Unknown to him, this dialogue ensued.

Leonard. You live, Sir, in these dales, a quiet

life:

Your years make up one peaceful family;
And who would grieve and fret, if, welcome come
And welcome gone, they are so like each other,
They cannot be remembered? Scarce a funeral
Comes to this church-yard once in eighteen months;
And yet, some changes must take place among you:
And you, who dwell here, even among these rocks,
Can trace the finger of mortality,

And see, that with our threescore years and ten,
We are not all that perish.—I remember

(For many years ago I passed this road)

There was a foot-way all along the fields

By the brook-side-'t is gone-and that dark cleft! To me it does not seem to wear the face

Priest. Ay, there, indeed, your memory is a friend That does not play you false.-On that tall pike (It is the loneliest place of all these hills)

There were two springs which bubbled side by side.
As if they had been made that they might be
Companions for each other: the huge crag
Was rent with lightning-one hath disappeared;
The other, left behind, is flowing still.
For accidents and changes such as these,
We want not 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,
Το 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 nor skull,-type of our earthly state
Nor 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, 't is true, might beg their bread
If every English church-yard were like ours;
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-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.

"T is 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.
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 burdens 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 on these rough paths
Even in the longest day of midsummer-

Leonard. But those two Orphans!

Priest.

Orphans! Such they were

Yet not while Walter lived:-for, though their pa

rents

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 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 did-and truly:

They loved this good old Man?

Priest.

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: 't was 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,