White Doe of Rylstone in his Oxford Lectures, Aspects of Poetry (chapter xii. pp. 373-76). "What is it that gives to it" (the poem) "its chief power and charm? Is it not the imaginative use which the poet has made of the White Doe? With her appearance the poem opens, with her re-appearance it closes. And the passages in which she is introduced are radiant with the purest light of poetry. A mere floating tradition she was, which the historian of Craven had preserved. How much does the poet bring out of how little! It was a high stroke of genius to seize on this slight traditionary incident, and make it the organ of so much. What were the objects which he had to describe and blend into one harmonious whole. They were these :

"1. The last expiring gleam of feudal chivalry, ending in the ruin of an ancient race, and the desolation of an ancestral home.

"2. The sole survivor, purified and exalted by the sufferings she had to undergo.

"3. The pathos of the decaying sanctities of Bolton, after wrong and outrage, abandoned to the healing of nature and time. "4. Lastly, the beautiful scenery of pastoral Wharfdale, and of the fells around Bolton, which blend so well with these affecting memories.

"All these were before him-they had melted into his imagination, and waited to be woven into one harmonious creation. He takes the White Doe, and makes her the exponent, the symbol, the embodiment of them all. The one central aim -to represent the beatification of the heroine-how was this to be attained? Had it been a drama, the poet would have made the heroine give forth in speeches, her hidden mind and character. But this was a romantic narrative. Was the poet to make her soliloquise, analyse her own feelings, lay bare her heart in metaphysical monologue? This might have been done by some modern poets, but it was not Wordsworth's way of exhibiting character, reflective though he was. When he analyses feelings they are generally his own, not those of his characters. To shadow forth that which is invisible, the sanctity of Emily's chastened soul, he lays hold of this sensible image-a creature, the purest, most innocent, most beautiful in the whole realm of nature-and makes her the vehicle in which he embodies the saintliness which is a thing invisible. It is the hardest of all tasks to make spiritual things sensuous, without degrading them. I know not where this difficulty has been more happily met ; for we are made to feel that, before the poem closes, the Doe has ceased to be a mere animal, or a physical creature at all, but in the light of the poet's imagination, has been transfigured into a heavenly apparition-a type of all that is pure, and affecting, and saintly. And not only the chastened soul of her mistress, but the beautiful Priory of Bolton, the whole Vale of Wharfe, and all the surrounding scenery, are illumined by the glory which she makes; her presence irradiates them all with a beauty and an interest more than the eye discovers. Seen through her as an imaginative transparency, they become spiritualized ; in fact, she and they alike become the symbol and expression of the sentiment which pervades the poem-a sentiment broad and deep as the world. And yet, any one who visits these scenes, in a mellow autumnal day, will feel that she is no alien or adventitious image, imported by the caprice of the poet, but altogether native to the place, one which gathers up and concentrates all the undefined spirit and sentiment which lie spread around it. She both glorifies the scenery by her presence, and herself seems to be a natural growth of the scenery, so that it finds in her its most appropriate utterance. This power of imagination to divine and project the very corporeal image which suits and expresses the image of a scene, Wordsworth has many times shown.

"And so the poem has no definite end, but passes off, as it were, into the illimitable. It rises out of the perturbations of time and transitory things, and, passing upward itself, takes our thoughts with it to calm places and eternal sunshine."-ED.

THE FORCE OF PRAYER ; *

OR, THE FOUNDING OF BOLTON PRIORY

A TRADITION

Composed 1807. - Published 1815

[An appendage to The White Doe. Rogers, has also written on the subject.†

* See The White Doe of Rylstone.-W. W. 1820.

My friend, Mr.
The story is

† Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth, May 1819, of Rogers-"He has been re-writing your Poem of the Strid, and publishing it at the end of his 'Human Life. Tie him up to the cart, hangman, while you are about it." (The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. p. 20.)-ED.

preserved in Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven—a topographical writer of first-rate merit in all that concerns the past; but such was his aversion from the modern spirit, as shown in the spread of manufactories in those districts of which he treats, that his readers are left entirely ignorant both of the progress of these arts and their real bearing upon the comfort, virtues, and happiness of the inhabitants. While wandering on foot through the fertile valleys and over the moorlands of the Apennine that divide Yorkshire from Lancashire, I used to be delighted with observing the number of substantial cottages that had sprung up on every side, each having its little plot of fertile ground won from the surrounding waste. A bright and warm fire, if needed, was always to be found in these dwellings. The father was at his loom; the children looked healthy and happy. Is it not to be feared that the increase of mechanic power had done away with many of these blessings, and substituted many ills? Alas! if these evils grow, how are they to be checked, and where is the remedy to be found? Political economy will not supply it; that is certain; we must look to something deeper, purer, and higher.-I. F.]

Included among the "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”

-ED.

“What is good for a bootless bene?"

With these dark words begins my Tale;
And their meaning is, whence can comfort spring

When Prayer is of no avail ?

"What is good for a bootless bene?"

The Falconer to the Lady said;

And she made answer "ENDLESS SORROW!"
For she knew that her Son was dead.

She knew it by 1 the Falconer's words,
And from the look of the Falconer's eye ;
And from the love which was in her soul
For her youthful Romilly.

-Young Romilly through Barden woods
Is ranging high and low;

1 1820.

5

10

1815.

The 2 striding-place is called THE STRID,
A name which it took of yore :
A thousand years hath it borne that name,

That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep ?

Wharf shall be to pitying hearts
A name more sad than Yarrow.

40

If for a lover the Lady wept,

A solace she might borrow

From death, and from the passion of death :

Old Wharf might heal her sorrow.

She weeps not for the wedding-day
Which was to be to-morrow:

45

Her hope was a further-looking hope,

And hers is a mother's sorrow.

He was a tree that stood alone,
And proudly did its branches wave;
And the root of this delightful tree

50

Was in her husband's grave !

Long, long in darkness did she sit,
And her first words were, "Let there be
In Bolton, on the field of Wharf,

55

* The Lady Alice De Romilly built not only Bolton Priory, but the nave of Carlisle Cathedral, and the chancel of Crosthwaite Parish Church at Keswick.-ED.

↑ "Young Romilly" was a son of Fitz Duncan, Earl of Murray in Scotland, whose Cumbrian estates extended from Dunmail Raise to St. Bees. This