When, whether it blew foul or fair, they two
Were brother Shepherds on their native hills.
—They were the last of all their race: and now
When Leonard had approached his home, his heart
Failed in him; and, not venturing to inquire
Tidings of one whom he so dearly loved,
Towards the church-yard he had turned aside,
That, as he knew in what particular spot
His family were laid, he thence might learn
If still his Brother lived, or to the file
Another grave was added.—He had found
Another grave, near which a full half-hour
He had remained; but, as he gazed, there grew
Such a confusion in his memory,
That he began to doubt, and he had hopes
That he had seen this heap of turf before,
That it was not another grave, but one
He had forgotten. He had lost his path,
As up the vale he came that afternoon,
Through fields which once had been well known to him.
And oh! what joy the recollection now
Sent to his heart! He lifted up his eyes,
And looking round he thought that he perceived
Strange alteration wrought on every side
Among the woods and fields, and that the rocks,
And the eternal hills, themselves were changed.
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
He scanned 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 cheeks, or solitary smiles
Into his face, until the setting sun
Write Fool upon his forehead. Planted thus
Beneath a shed that overarched 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 recognized 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—’tis gone—and that dark cleft!
To me it does not seem to wear the face
Which then it had.
Priest
Why, Sir, for aught I know,
That chasm is much the same—
Leonard
But, surely, yonder—
Priest
Aye, 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,10
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:
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 man11
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
