ry.

"When a Prince to the fate of the Peasant has yielded,
The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall;
With 'scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,
And pages stand mute by the canopied pall:
Through the courts at deep midnight the torches are gleaming,
In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beaming,
Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a chief of the people should fall."

Wordsworth and Landor, who seldom agreed, agreed that Scott's most
imaginative line was the verse in "Helvellyn":

"When the wind waved his garment how oft didst thou start!"

In several of his poems Wordsworth handled legendary subjects, and it is
most instructive here to notice his avoidance of the romantic note, and
to imagine how Scott would have managed the same material. In the
prefatory note to "The White Doe of Rylstone," Wordsworth himself pointed
out the difference. "The subject being taken from feudal times has led
to its being compared to some of Sir 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
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."

This poem is founded upon "The Rising in the North," a ballad given in
the "Reliques," which recounts the insurrection of the Earls of
Northumberland and Westmoreland against Elizabeth in 1569. Richard
Norton of Rylstone, with seven stalwart sons, joined in the rising,
carrying a banner embroidered with a red cross and the five wounds of
Christ. The story bristled with opportunities for the display of feudal
pomp, and it is obvious upon what points in the action Scott would have
laid the emphasis; the muster of the tenantry of the great northern
Catholic houses of Percy and Neville; the high mass celebrated by the
insurgents in Durham Cathedral; the march of the Nortons to Brancepeth;
the eleven days' siege of Barden Tower; the capture and execution of
Marmaduke and Ambrose; and--by way of episode--the Battle of Neville's
Cross in 1346.[19] But in conformity to the prin