POEMS

FOUNDED ON THE AFFECTIONS.

THE BROTHERS.*

"THESE tourists, heaven preserve us! needs must live
A profitable life: some glance along,
Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air,
And they were butterflies to wheel about
Long as the summer lasted: some, as wise,
Upon the forehead of a jutting erag

Sit perched, with book and pencil on their knee,
And look and scribble, scribble on and look,
Until a man might travel twelve stout miles,
Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn.
But, for that moping son of idleness,

Why can he tarry yonder?-In our churchyard
Is neither epitaph nor monument,

Tombstone nor name-only the turf we tread
And a few natural graves." To Jane, his wife,
Thus spake the homely priest of Ennerdale.
It was a July evening; and he sate
Upon the long stone-seat beneath the caves
Of his old cottage, as it chanced, that day,
Employed in winter's work. Upon the stone
His wife sat near him, teasing matted wool,
While, from the twin cards toothed with glittering wire,
He fed the spindle of the youngest child,

Who turned her large round wheel in the open air
With back and forward steps. Towards the field

In which the parish chapel stood alone,
Girt round with a bare wing of mossy wall,
While half an hour went by, the Priest had sent
Many a long look of wonder: and at last,
Risen from his seat, beside the snow-white ridge
Of carded wool which the old man had piled,
He laid his implements with gentle care,
Each in the other locked; and, down the path
Which from his cottage to the churchyard led,
He took his way, impatient to accost
The Stranger, whom he saw still lingering there.

'Twas one well known to him in former days,
A shepherd-lad;-who ere his sixteenth year

This poem was intended to conclude a series of pastorals, the scene of which was laid among the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. I mention this to apologize for the abruptness with which the poem begins.

Had left that calling, tempted to entrust
His expectations to the fickle winds
And perilous waters,-with the mariners
A fellow-mariner,-and so had fared

Through twenty seasons; but he had been reared
Among the mountains, and he in his heart
Was half a shepherd on the stormy seas.
Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard
The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds

Of caves and trees:- and, when the regular wind
Between the tropics filled the steady sail,

And blew with the same breath through days and weeks,
Lengthening invisibly its weary line

Along the cloudless main, he, in those hours

Of tiresome indolence, would often hang

Over the vessel's side, and gaze and

gaze;

And, while the broad green wave and sparkling foam
Flashed round him images and hues that wrought
In union with the employment of his heart,
He, thus by feverish passion overcome,
Even with the organs of his bodily eye,

Below him, in the bosom of the deep,

Saw mountains,-saw the forms of sheep that grazed
On verdant hills-with dwellings among trees,

And shepherds clad in the same country gray
Which he himself had worn.*

And now at last

From perils manifold, with some small wealth
Acquired by traffic in the Indian isles,
To his parental home he is returned,
With a determined purpose to resume
The life which he lived there; both for the sake
Of many darling pleasures, and the love
Which to an only brother he has borne
In all his hardships, since that happy time
When, whether it blew foul or fair, they two
Were brother shepherds on their native hills.
They were the last of all their race: and now,
When Leonard had approached his home, his heart
Failed in him; and, not venturing to inquire
Tidings of one whom he so dearly loved,
Towards the churchyard he had turned aside,-
That, as he knew in what particular spot
His family were laid, he thence might learn
If still his Brother lived, or to the file
Another grave was added.-He had found
Another grave,-near which a full half-hour

He had remained; but, as he gazed, there grew
Such a confusion in his memory,

That he began to doubt; and he had hopes

This description of the Calenture is sketched from an imperfect recollection of an admirable one in prose, by Mr. Gilbert, author of "The Hurricane."

T

That he had seen this heap of turf before,-
That it was not another grave, but one
He had forgotten. He had lost his path,
As up the vale, that afternoon, he walk ed
Through fields which once had been well known to him;
And oh! what joy the recollection now
Sent to his heart! he lifted up his eyes,
And, looking round, imagined that he saw
Strange alteration wrought on every side
Among the woods and fields, and that the rocks,
And the eternal hills, themselves were changed.

By this the Priest who down the field had come
Unseen by Leonard, at the churchyard gate
Stopped short.-and thence, at leisure, limb by limb
Perused him with a gay complacency.

Ay, thought the Vlcar, smiling to himself,

"Tis one of those who needs must leave the path
Of the world's business to go wild alone:
His arms have a perpetual holiday;
The happy man will creep about the fields,
Following his fancies by the hour, to bring
Tears down his cheeks, or solitary smiles
Into his face, until the setting sun
Write fool upon his forehead. Planted thus
Beneath a shed that over-arched the gate
Of this rude churchyard, till the stars appeared,
The good man might have communed with himself,
But that the Stranger, who had left the grave,
Approached; he recognized the Priest at once,
And, after greetings interchanged, and given
By Leonard to the Vicar as to one
Unknown to him, this dialogue ensued.

LEONARD.

You live, Sir, in these dales, a quiet life:
Your years make up one peaceful family;
And who would grieve and fret, if, welcome come
And welcome gone, they are so like each other,
They cannot be remembered? Scarce a funeral
Comes to this churchyard once in eighteen months:
And yet, some changes must take place among you,
And you, who dwell here, even among these rocks:
Can trace the finger of mortality,

And see, that with our threescore years and ten
We are not all that perish. I remember,
For many years ago I passed this road,

There was a foot-way all along the fields

By the brook-side-'tis gone-and that dark cleft!
To me it does not seem to wear the face
Which then it had.

Ay, there, indeed, your memory is a friend
That does not play you false. On that tall pike
(It is the loneliest place of all these hills)

There were two springs which bubbled side by side,
As if they had been made that they might be
Companions for each other: ten years back,
Close to those brother fountains, the huge crag
Was rent with lightning,-one is dead and gone,
The other, left behind, is flowing still.*.
For accidents and changes such as these,
We want not store of them!--a waterspout
Will bring down half a mountain; what a feast
For folks that wander up and down like you
To see an acre's breadth of that wide cliff
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 felled:-and then for our own homes!
A child is born or christened, a field ploughed,
A daughter sent to service, a web spun,
The old house clock is decked 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-
Yours was a stranger's judgment: for historians,
Commend me to these valleys!

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,
Crossbone 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.

This actually took place upon Kidstow Pike, at the head of Hawes Water.

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;
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.

For eight-score winters past,
With what I've witnessed, and with what I've heard,
Perhaps 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 church-ward wall.

PRIEST.

That's Walter Ewbank.

He had as white a head and fresh a cheek
As ever was 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 hearth, and land,
With other burthens than the crop it bore.