Chapter IV (3)

_Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills._

He was at Flodden in 1513, when nearly sixty years of age, leading there the "flower of Craven."

From Penigent to Pendle Hill,
From Linton to long Addingham,
And all that Craven's coasts did till,
They with the lusty Clifford came.

Compare, in the first canto of _The White Doe of Rylstone_ (p. 117)--

when he, with spear and shield,
Rode full of years to Flodden-field.

He died in 1523, and was buried in the choir of Bolton Priory.

The following is Sarah Coleridge's criticism of the _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_, in the editorial note to her father's _Biographia Literaria_ (vol. ii. ch. ix. p. 152, ed. 1847):--

"The transitions and vicissitudes in this noble lyric I have
always thought rendered it one of the finest specimens of modern
subjective poetry which our age has seen. The ode commences in a
tone of high gratulation and festivity--a tone not only glad, but
_comparatively_ even jocund and light-hearted. The Clifford is
restored to the home, the honours and estates of his ancestors.
Then it sinks and falls away to the remembrance of
tribulation--times of war and bloodshed, flight and terror, and
hiding away from the enemy--times of poverty and distress, when
the Clifford was brought, a little child, to the shelter of a
northern valley. After a while it emerges from those depths of
sorrow--gradually rises into a strain of elevated tranquillity and
contemplative rapture; through the power of imagination, the
beautiful and impressive aspects of nature are brought into
relationship with the spirit of him, whose fortunes and character
form the subject of the piece, and are represented as gladdening
and exalting it, whilst they keep it _pure and unspotted from the
world_. Suddenly the Poet is carried on with greater animation and
passion: he has returned to the point whence he started--flung
himself back into the tide of stirring life and moving events.
All is to come over again, struggle and conflict, chances and
changes of war, victory and triumph, overthrow and desolation. I
know nothing, in lyric poetry, more beautiful or affecting than
the final transition from this part of the ode, with its rapid
metre, to the slow elegiac stanzas at the end, when, from the
warlike fervour and eagerness, the jubilant strain which has just
been described, the Poet passes back into the sublime silence of
Nature, gathering amid her deep and quiet bosom a more subdued and
solemn tenderness than he had manifested before; it is as if from
the heights of the imaginative intellect, his spirit had retreated
into the recesses of a profoundly thoughtful Christian heart."

Professor Henry Reed said of this poem--"Had he never written another ode, this alone would set him at the head of the lyric poets of England."--ED.

VARIANTS:

[1] 1815.

... sorrows ... 1807.

[2] 1827.

... hath ... 1807.

[3] 1807.

... royalty. 1815.

The text of 1820 returns to that of 1807.

[4] 1845.

Though she is but a lonely Tower!
Silent, deserted of her best,
Without an Inmate or a Guest, 1807.

Deserted, emptied of her best. MS.

To vacancy and silence left;
Of all her guardian sons bereft-- 1820.

[5] 1836.

Knight, Squire, or Yeoman, Page, or Groom; 1807.

[6] 1807.

... on vale and hill: MS.

[7] 1845.

... solemn ... 1807.

[8] 1845. This line was previously three lines--

And a chearful company,
That learn'd of him submissive ways;
And comforted his private days. 1807.

A spirit-soothing company, 1836.

[9] 1836.

They moved about in open sight,
To and fro, for his delight. 1807.

[10] 1836.

On ... 1807.

[11] 1807.

... heard ... MS.

[12] 1836.

And the Caves ... 1807.

[13] 1836.

Face of thing ... 1807.

[14] C. and 1840.

And, if Men report him right,
He can whisper words of might. 1807.

He could whisper ... 1827.

And, if that men report him right,
He could whisper ... 1836.

[15] 1845.

Alas! the fervent Harper did not know
That for a tranquil Soul the Lay was framed,
Who, long compell'd in humble walks to go, 1807.

[16] 1807.

... of ... MS.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Compare _Hudibras_, part II. canto i. ll. 567-8--

That shall infuse Eternal Spring
And everlasting flourishing. ED.

[B] This line is from _The Battle of Bosworth Field_, by Sir John Beaumont (Brother to the Dramatist), whose poems are written with so much spirit, elegance, and harmony, that it is supposed, as the Book is very scarce, a new edition of it would be acceptable to Scholars and Men of taste, and, accordingly, it is in contemplation to give one.--W. W. 1807.

Beaumont's line in _The Battle of Bosworth Field_ is--

The earth assists thee with the cry of blood. ED.

[C] "No three words could better describe the gulfs on the side of Saddleback." (H. D. Rawnsley.)

[D] "Rugged patches of Hawkweed, golden rod, and white water ranunculus in the pools." (H. D. Rawnsley.)

[E] The eagle nested in Borrowdale as late as 1785.--ED.

[F] It is imagined by the people of the Country that there are two immortal Fish, Inhabitants of this Tarn, which lies in the mountains not far from Threlkeld. Blencathara, mentioned before, is the old and proper name of the mountain vulgarly called Saddle-back.--W. W. 1807.

[G] The martial character of the Cliffords is well known to the readers of English History; but it may not be improper here to say, by way of comment on these lines and what follows, that, besides several others who perished in the same manner, the four immediate Progenitors of the person in whose hearing this is supposed to be spoken, all died in the Field.--W. W. 1807.

Compare _The Borderers_, act III. l. 56 (vol. i. p. 173)--

They say, Lord Clifford is a savage man. ED.

[H] He was killed at Ferrybridge the day before the battle of Towton.--ED.

1808

The poems referring to Coleorton are all transferred to the year 1807, and _The Force of Prayer_ was written in that year. Those composed in 1808 were few in number. With the exception of _The White Doe of Rylstone_--to which additions were made in that year--they include only the two sonnets _Composed while the Author was engaged in writing a Tract, occasioned by the Convention of Cintra_, and the fragment on _George and Sarah Green_. The latter poem Wordsworth gave to De Quincey, who published it in his "Recollections of Grasmere," which appeared in _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_ in September 1839; but it never found a place in any edition of Wordsworth's own poems. In this edition it is printed in the appendix to volume viii.

The reasons which have led me to assign _The White Doe of Rylstone_ to the year 1808, are stated in a note to the poem (see p. 191). I infer that it was practically finished in April 1808, because Dorothy Wordsworth, in a letter to Lady Beaumont, dated April 20, 1808, says, "The poem is to be published. Longman has consented--in spite of the odium under which my brother labours as a poet--to give him 100 guineas for 1000 copies, according to his demand." She gives no indication of the name of the poem referred to. As it must, however, have been one which was to be published separately, she can only refer to _The White Doe_ or to _The Excursion_; but the latter poem was not finished in 1808.

It is probable, from the remark made in a subsequent letter to Lady Beaumont, February 1810, that Wordsworth intended either to add to what he had written in 1808, or to alter some passages before publication; or by "completing" the poem, he may have meant simply adding the Dedication, which was not written till 1815.

All things considered, it seems the best arrangement that the poems of 1808 should begin with _The White Doe of Rylstone_. In the year 1891 I edited this poem for the Clarendon Press. A few additional details have come to light since then, and are introduced into the notes. S. T. Coleridge's criticism of the poem in _Biographia Literaria_, vol. ii. chap. xxii. p. 176 (edition 1817), should be consulted.--ED.

THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE;

OR, THE FATE OF THE NORTONS

Composed 1807-10.--Published 1815

ADVERTISEMENT

During the Summer of 1807, I visited, for the first time, the beautiful country that surrounds Bolton Priory, in Yorkshire; and the Poem of the WHITE DOE, founded upon a Tradition connected with that place, was composed at the close of the same year.--W. W.[A]

[The earlier half of this poem was composed at Stockton-upon-Tees, when Mrs. Wordsworth and I were on a visit to her eldest brother, Mr. Hutchinson, at the close of the year 1807. The country is flat, and the weather was rough. I was accustomed every day to walk to and fro under the shelter of a row of stacks, in a field at a small distance from the town, and there poured forth my verses aloud as freely as they would come. Mrs. Wordsworth reminds me that her brother stood upon the punctilio of not sitting down to dinner till I joined the party; and it frequently happened that I did not make my appearance till too late, so that she was made uncomfortable. I here beg her pardon for this and similar transgressions during the whole course of our wedded life. To my beloved sister the same apology is due.

When, from the visit just mentioned, we returned to Town-end, Grasmere, I proceeded with the poem; and it may be worth while to note, as a caution to others who may cast their eye on these memoranda, that the skin having been rubbed off my heel by my wearing too tight a shoe, though I desisted from walking, I found that the irritation of the wounded part was kept up, by the act of composition, to a degree that made it necessary to give my constitution a holiday. A rapid cure was the consequence. Poetic excitement, when accompanied by protracted labour in composition, has throughout my life brought on more or less bodily derangement. Nevertheless, I am at the close of my seventy-third year, in what may be called excellent health; so that intellectual labour is not necessarily unfavourable to longevity. But perhaps I ought here to add that mine has been generally carried on out of doors.

Let me here say a few words of this poem in the way of criticism. The subject being taken from feudal times has led to its being compared to some of Walter Scott's poems that belong to the same age and state of society. The comparison is inconsiderate. Sir Walter pursued the customary and very natural course of conducting an action, presenting various turns of fortune, to some outstanding point on which the mind might rest as a termination or catastrophe. The course I have attempted to pursue is entirely different. Everything that is attempted by the principal personages in _The White Doe_ fails, so far as its object is external and substantial. So far as it is moral and spiritual it succeeds. The heroine of the poem knows that her duty is not to interfere with the current of events, either to forward or delay them, but

to abide
The shock, and finally secure
O'er pain and grief a triumph pure.

This she does in obedience to her brother's injunction, as most suitable to a mind and character that, under previous trials, has been proved to accord with his. She achieves this not without aid from the communication with the inferior Creature, which often leads her thoughts to revolve upon the past with a tender and humanising influence that exalts rather than depresses her. The anticipated beatification, if I may so say, of her mind, and the apotheosis of the companion of her solitude, are the points at which the Poem aims, and constitute its legitimate catastrophe, far too spiritual a one for instant or widely-spread sympathy, but not, therefore, the less fitted to make a deep and permanent impression upon that class of minds who think and feel more independently, than the many do, of the surfaces of things and interests transitory, because belonging more to the outward and social forms of life than to its internal spirit. How insignificant a thing, for example, does personal prowess appear compared with the fortitude of patience and heroic martyrdom; in other words, with struggles for the sake of principle, in preference to victory gloried in for its own sake.--I. F.]

DEDICATION

I

In trellised shed with clustering roses gay,[B]
And, MARY! oft beside our blazing fire,
When years of wedded life were as a day
Whose current answers to the heart's desire,
Did we together read in Spenser's Lay 5
How Una, sad of soul--in sad attire,
The gentle Una, of celestial birth,[1]
To seek her Knight went wandering o'er the earth.

II

Ah, then, Beloved! pleasing was the smart,
And the tear precious in compassion shed 10
For Her, who, pierced by sorrow's thrilling dart,
Did meekly bear the pang unmerited;
Meek as that emblem of her lowly heart
The milk-white Lamb which in a line she led,--[C]
And faithful, loyal in her innocence, 15
Like the brave Lion slain in her defence.

III

Notes could we hear as of a faery shell
Attuned to words with sacred wisdom fraught;
Free Fancy prized each specious miracle,
And all its finer inspiration caught; 20
Till in the bosom of our rustic Cell,
We by a lamentable change were taught
That "bliss with mortal Man may not abide:"[D]
How nearly joy and sorrow are allied!

IV

For us the stream of fiction ceased to flow, 25
For us the voice of melody was mute.
--But, as soft gales dissolve the dreary snow,
And give the timid herbage leave to shoot,
Heaven's breathing influence failed not to bestow
A timely promise of unlooked-for fruit, 30
Fair fruit of pleasure and serene content
From blossoms wild of fancies innocent.

V

It soothed us--it beguiled us--then, to hear
Once more of troubles wrought by magic spell;
And griefs whose aery motion comes not near 35
The pangs that tempt the Spirit to rebel:
Then, with mild Una in her sober cheer,
High over hill and low adown the dell
Again we wandered, willing to partake
All that she suffered for her dear Lord's sake. 40

VI

Then, too, this Song _of mine_ once more could please,
Where anguish, strange as dreams of restless sleep,
Is tempered and allayed by sympathies
Aloft ascending, and descending deep,
Even to the inferior Kinds; whom forest-trees 45
Protect from beating sunbeams, and the sweep
Of the sharp winds;--fair Creatures!--to whom Heaven
A calm and sinless life, with love, hath given.

VII

This tragic Story cheered us; for it speaks
Of female patience winning firm repose; 50
And, of the recompense that[2] conscience seeks,
A bright, encouraging, example shows;
Needful when o'er wide realms the tempest breaks,
Needful amid life's ordinary woes;--
Hence, not for them unfitted who would bless 55
A happy hour with holier happiness.