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; Now there's a grave-your foot is half upon it,- 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 Of Walter's forefathers o'erflowed the bounds They left to him the family heart, and land year A cheerful mind,—and buffeted with bond, Interest, and mortgages; at last he sank, He had the lightest foot in Ennerdale : I almost see him tripping down the path LEONARD. But those two Orphans! PRIEST. Orphans! Such they were Yet not while Walter lived:-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 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! Ay-You may turn that way-it is a grave Which will bear looking at. LEONARD. These Boys-I hope They loved this good old Man?——— PRIEST. They did-and truly: But that was what we almost overlooked, They were such darlings of each other. For Though from their cradles they had lived with Walter, The only Kinsman near them, and though he Inclined to them, 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. To hear, to meet them!-From their house the School Of storm and thaw, when every water-course And unbridged stream, such as you may have noticed Crossing our roads at every hundred steps, Was swoln into a noisy rivulet, Would Leonard then, when elder boys perhaps That God who made the great book of the world Would bless such piety LEONARD. It may be then PRIEST. Never did worthier lads break English bread! The finest Sunday that the Autumn saw, The very night before he went away, That, if he is alive, he has it yet. LEONARD. It seems, these Brothers have not lived to be A comfort to each other. PRIEST. That they might Live to such end, is what both old and young In this our valley all of us have wished, And what, for my part, I have often prayed: |