With two or three Companions, whom their course
Of occupation led from height to height
Under a cloudless sun, till he, at length,
Through weariness, or, haply, to indulge
The humour of the moment, lagg'd behind.
You see yon precipice; — it wears the shape
Of a vast building made of many crags;
And in the midst is one particular rock
That rises like a column from the vale,
Whence by our shepherds it is call'd THE PILLAR.
Upon its aëry summit crown'd with heath,
The Loiterer, not unnoticed by his Comrades,
Lay stretch'd at ease; but, passing by the place
On their return, they found that he was gone.
No ill was fear'd; but one of them by chance
Entering, when evening was far spent, the house
Which at that time was James's home, there learn'd
That nobody had seen him all that day:
The morning came, and still he was unheard of:
The neighbours were alarm'd, and to the Brook
Some hasten'd, some towards the Lake: ere noon
They found him at the foot of that same Rock
Dead, and with mangled limbs. The third day after
I buried him, poor Youth, and there he lies!
And that then is his grave! - Before his death
If he had one, the youth had twenty homes.
believe, then, that his mind was easy?—
Yes, long before he died, he found that time
Is a true friend to sorrow; and unless
His thoughts were turn'd on Leonard's luckless fortune, He talk'd about him with a cheerful love.
He could not come to an unhallow'd end!
You recollect I mention'd
A habit which disquietude and grief
Had brought upon him; and we all conjectured
That, as the day was warm, he had lain down
Upon the grass, and waiting for his comrades,
He there had fallen asleep; that in his sleep
He to the margin of the precipice
Had walk'd, and from the summit had fallen headlong.
And so, no doubt, he perish'd: at the time,
We guess, that in his hands he must have held
His Shepherd's staff; for midway in the cliff
It had been caught; and there for many years
It hung - and moulder'd there.
The Stranger would have thank'd him, but he felt
A gushing from his heart, that took away
The power of speech. Both left the spot in silence;
And Leonard, when they reach'd the church-yard gate,
As the Priest lifted up the latch, turn'd round, -
And, looking at the grave, he said, "My Brother!"
The Vicar did not hear the words: and now,
Pointing towards the Cottage, he entreated
That Leonard would partake his homely fare:
The other thank'd him with a fervent voice;
But added, that, the evening being calm,
He would pursue his journey. So they parted.
It was not long ere Leonard reach'd a grove
That overhung the road: he there stopp'd short,
And, sitting down beneath the trees, review'd
All that the Priest had said: his early years
Were with him in his heart: his cherish'd hopes,
And thoughts which had been his an hour before,
All press'd on him with such a weight, that now,
This vale, where he had been so happy, seem'd
A place in which he could not bear to live:
So he relinquish'd all his purposes.
He travell❜d on to Egremont: and thence,
That night, he wrote a letter to the Priest,
Reminding him of what had pass'd between them;
And adding, with a hope to be forgiven,
That it was from the weakness of his heart
He had not dared to tell him who he was.
This done, he went on shipboard, and is now
A Seaman, a gray-headed Mariner.
(SEE THE CHRONicle of geoffrEY OF MONMOUTH, AND MILTON'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.)
WHERE be the Temples which, in Britain's Isle,
For his paternal Gods, the Trojan raised?
Gone like a morning dream, or like a pile
Of clouds-that in cerulean ether blazed!
Ere Julius landed on her white-cliffed shore,
They sank, deliver❜d o'er
To fatal dissolution; and, I ween,
No vestige then was left that such had ever been.
Nathless, a British record (long concealed
In old Armorica, whose secret springs
No Gothic conqueror ever drank) revealed
The wond'rous current of forgotten things;
How Brutus came, by oracles impelled,
And Albion's giants quelled,-
A brood whom no civility could melt,
"Who never tasted grace, and goodness ne'er had felt."
|