As if they had been made that they might be By some untoward death among the rocks: A wood is fell'd :—and then for our own homes! The old house cloth is deck'd 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, oné serving, Sir, For the whole dale, and one for each fire-side, Your's was a stranger's judgment: for historians Commend me to these vallies. LEONARD. Yet your church-yard Seems, if such freedom may be used with you, Here's neither head nor foot-stone, plate of brass, 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, 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. 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 Left in the church-yard wall. PRIEST. That's Walter Ewbank. He had as white a head and fresh a cheek You see it yonder, and those few green fields. A little-yet a little-and old Walter, LEONARD. But these two Orphans ! PRIEST. Orphans! such they were |