Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

XII.] 'THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE: 349
in the poet's thought, is the action subordinated to the
one pervading sentiment he desires to convey, that
the narrative portion of the poem seems broken, feeble,
and ill-adjusted. For not on the main action at all, but
on quite a side incident — not on the obvious, but on a
more hidden aspect of the story, has Wordsworth fixed
his eye.
Not that the epic faculty was wholly wanting in him.
In the song of Brotigham Castle he had struck a true
epic strain : —
' Armour rusting in his halls
On the blood of Clifford calls ;—
" Quell the Scot," exclaims the lance—
" Bear me to the heart of France,"
Is the longing of the shield.'
This, if no other of his poems, proves that he was not
insensible to the thought that —
* In our halls is hung
Armour of the invincible knights of old.'
But his delights were not with these. Nowhere does
this appear more clearly than in The White Doe of
Rylstone, where, with such temptation to dwell on one
of the latest outbursts of the feudal spirit in England,
he turned so persistently aside to contemplate quite
another aspect of things.
What that aspect is — what were the incidents in
that rising in the North, which arrested Wordsworth's