Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition)

One roaring cataract — a sharp May storm

Will come with loads of January snow,

And in one night send twenty score of sheep

To feed the ravens, or a Shepherd dies

By some untoward death among the rocks:

The ice breaks up and sweeps away a bridge —

A wood is fell’d: — and then for our own homes!

A child is born or christen’d, a field plough’d,

A daughter sent to service, a web spun,

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, one serving, Sir,

For the whole dale, and one for each fireside,

Your’s was a stranger’s judgment: for historians

Commend me to these vallies.

LEONARD.

Yet your churchyard

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 churchyard 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 firesides.

And then for our immortal part, we want

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:

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 highway 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 churchyard wall.

PRIEST.

That’s Walter Ewbank.

He had as white a head and fresh a cheek

As ever were produc’d by youth and age

Engendering in the blood of hale fourscore.

For five long generations had the heart

Of Walter’s forefathers o’erflow’d the bounds

Of their inheritance, that single cottage,

You see it yonder, and those few green fields.

They toil’d 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 year the old man still preserv’d

A chearful 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 spurr’d 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 in these rough paths

Even in the longest day of midsummer —

LEONARD.

But these two Orphans!

PRIEST.

Orphans! such they were —

Yet not while Walter liv’d — 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 talk’d 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!

Aye. You may turn that way — it is a grave

Which will bear looking at.

LEONARD.

These Boys I hope

They lov’d this good old Man —

PRIEST.

They did — and truly,

But that was what we almost overlook’d,

They were such darlings of each other. For

Though from their cradles they had liv’d with Walter,

The only kinsman near them in the house,

Yet he being old, they 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 unbridg’d stream, such as you may have notic’d

Crossing our roads at every hundred steps,

Was swoln into a noisy rivulet,

Would Leonard then, when elder boys perhaps

Remain’d 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,

Aye, 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 grew there.

Like roe-bucks they went bounding o’er the hills:

They play’d like two young ravens on the crags:

Then they could write, aye 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 liv’d to be

A comfort to each other. —

PRIEST.

That they might

Live to that end, is what both old and young

In this our valley all of us have wish’d,

And what, for my part, I have often pray’d:

But Leonard —

LEONARD.

Then James still is left among you —

PRIEST.

’Tis of the elder Brother I am speaking:

They had an Uncle, he was at that time

A thriving man, and traffick’d on the seas:

And, but for this same Uncle, to this hour

Leonard had never handled rope or shroud.

For the Boy lov’d the life which we lead here;

And, though a very Stripling, twelve years old;

His soul was knit to this his native soil.

But, as I said, old Walter was too weak

To strive with such a torrent; when he died,

The estate and house were sold, and all their sheep,

A pretty flock, and which, for aught I know,

Had clothed the Ewbauks for a thousand years.

Well — all was gone, and they were destitute.

And Leonard, chiefly for his brother’s sake,