Page:Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/161

101 Yours was a stranger's judgment: for Historians,

Commend me to these valleys!

.

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.

.

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.

.

Your Dalesmen, then, do in each other's thoughts

Possess a kind of second life: no doubt