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You, Sir, could help me to the history

Of half these Graves?

PRIEST.

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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.
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 burthens than the crop it bore.
Year after
the old man still kept up

year

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 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.
Leonard, the elder by just eighteen months,
Was two years taller: 'twas a joy to see,

To hear, to meet them!-From their house the School
Was 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,

Was swoln into a noisy rivulet,

Would Leonard then, when elder boys perhaps
Remained at home, go staggering through the fords,
Bearing his Brother on his back. I've seen him,
On windy days, in one of those stray brooks,
Ay, more than once I've seen him mid-leg deep,
Their two books lying both on a dry stone
Upon the hither side: and once I said,
As I remember, looking round these rocks
And hills on which we all of us were born,

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,
With all its mealy clusters of ripe nuts,
Could never keep these boys away from church,
Or tempt them to an hour of sabbath breach.
Leonard and James! I warrant, every corner
Among these rocks, and every hollow place
Where foot could come, to one or both of them
Was known as well as to the flowers that grow there.
Like Roe-bucks they went bounding o'er the hills :
They played like two young Ravens on the crags:
Then they could write, ay and speak too, as well
As many of their betters-and for Leonard!

The very night before he went away,
In my own house I put into his hand
A Bible, and I'd wager twenty pounds,

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:
But Leonard-

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