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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,
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 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
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
