Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

XII.] 'THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE' 359
them, to look for no consolation from earthly sources,
but to seek it in that purer faith which they had
learned together. These are his words to her :
' But thou, my sister, doomed to be
The last leaf which by heaven's decree
Must hang upon a blasted tree ;
If not in vain we breathed the breath
Together of a purer faith —
If on one thought our minds have fed,
And we have in one meaning read —
If we like combatants have fared,
And for this issue been prepared —
If thou art beautiful, and youth
And thought endue thee with all truth —
Be strong ; — be worthy of the grace
Of God, and fill thy destined place :
A soul by force of sorrows high.
Uplifted to the purest sky
Of undisturbed humanity.'
When he had by this solemn adjuration, as it were,
consecrated his sister to fulfil her destiny, and to
become a soul beatified by sorrow, they part, and he
follows his armed kinsmen. This consecration, and the
sanctifying effect of sorrow on the heroine, is, as Words-
worth himself has said, ' the point on which henceforth
the whole moral interest of the poem hinges.'
The Third Canto describes the mustering of the host
at Brancepeth Castle, which was the Earl of Westmore-
land's stronghold on the Were, the meeting of Norton
and his eight sons with the two Earls, and his high-
spirited address to these —