No More Learning

Why, there, Sir, is a thought that's new to me!
The stone-cutters, 'tis true, might beg their bread 180
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 185
No symbols, Sir, to tell us that plain tale:
The thought of death sits easy on the man
Who has been born and dies among the mountains. [E]

_Leonard_. Your Dalesmen, then, do in each other's thoughts
Possess a kind of second life: no doubt 190
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-evening, [23] 195
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 highway of the world.
Now there's a grave--your foot is half upon it,--200
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? 205
It touches on that piece of native rock
Left in the church-yard wall.

_Priest_. That's Walter Ewbank.
[F]
He had as white a head and fresh a cheek
As ever were produced by youth and age 210
Engendering in the blood of hale fourscore.
Through five [24] 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. 215
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. 220
Year after year the old man still kept up [25]
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 225
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, 230
Unless our Landlord be your host to-night,
Have far to travel,--and on [26] these rough paths
Even in the longest day of midsummer--

_Leonard_. But those [27] two Orphans!

_Priest_. Orphans! --Such they were--235
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, 240
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, 245
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? --250

_Priest_.