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, 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, VOL. II. C 2 To see an acre's breadth of that wide cliff A child is born or christen'd, a field plough'd, For the whole dale, and one for each fire-side; Your's was a Stranger's judgment; for histo rians Commend me to these vallies. LEONARD. Yet your church-yard Seems, if such freedom may be used with you, To say that you are heedless of the past. 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: tains : LEONARD. moun Your dalesmen, then, do in each others thoughts 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 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. PRIEST. That's Walter Ewbank. He had as white a head and fresh a cheek to son, Each struggled, and each yielded as before Interest, and mortgages; at last he sank, God only knows, but to the very last LEONARD. But these two Orphans! PRIEST. Orphans such they were Yet not while Walter liv'd-for, though their Lay buried side by side as now they lie, And hauntings from the infirmity of love, |