Leonard.  Yet your Church-yard Seems, if such freedom may be used with you, To say that you are heedless of the past:  An orphan could not find his mother’s grave:  Here’s neither head nor foot-stone, plate of brass, 175 Cross-bones nor skull,—­type of our earthly state Nor emblem of our hopes:  [22] 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 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!