<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=540188" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The White Doe Of Rylstone, Or, The Fate Of The Nortons - Canto First</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">FROM Bolton's old monastic tower<br>The bells ring loud with gladsome power;<br>The sun shines bright; the fields are gay<br>With people in their best array<br>Of stole and doublet, hood and scarf,<br>Along the banks of crystal Wharf,<br>Through the Vale retired and lowly,<br>Trooping to that summons holy.<br>And, up among the moorlands, see<br>What sprinklings of blithe company! <br>Of lasses and of shepherd grooms,<br>That down the steep hills force their way,<br>Like cattle through the budded brooms;<br>Path, or no path, what care they?<br>And thus in joyous mood they hie<br>To Bolton's mouldering Priory.<br>What would they there?--Full fifty years<br>That sumptuous Pile, with all its peers,<br>Too harshly hath been doomed to taste<br>The bitterness of wrong and waste: <br>Its courts are ravaged; but the tower<br>Is standing with a voice of power,<br>That ancient voice which wont to call<br>To mass or some high festival;<br>And in the shattered fabric's heart<br>Remaineth one protected part;<br>A Chapel, like a wild-bird's nest,<br>Closely embowered and trimly drest;<br>And thither young and old repair,<br>This Sabbath-day, for praise and prayer. <br>Fast the churchyard fills;--anon<br>Look again, and they all are gone;<br>The cluster round the porch, and the folk<br>Who sate in the shade of the Prior's Oak!<br>And scarcely have they disappeared<br>Ere the prelusive hymn is heard:--<br>With one consent the people rejoice,<br>Filling the church with a lofty voice!<br>They sing a service which they feel:<br>For 'tis the sunrise now of zeal; <br>Of a pure faith the vernal prime--<br>In great Eliza's golden time.<br>A moment ends the fervent din,<br>And all is hushed, without and within;<br>For though the priest, more tranquilly,<br>Recites the holy liturgy,<br>The only voice which you can hear<br>Is the river murmuring near.<br>--When soft!--the dusky trees between,<br>And down the path through the open green, <br>Where is no living thing to be seen;<br>And through yon gateway, where is found,<br>Beneath the arch with ivy bound,<br>Free entrance to the churchyard ground--<br>Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,<br>Comes gliding in serene and slow,<br>Soft and silent as a dream,<br>A solitary Doe!<br>White she is as lily of June,<br>And beauteous as the silver moon <br>When out of sight the clouds are driven<br>And she is left alone in heaven;<br>Or like a ship some gentle day<br>In sunshine sailing far away,<br>A glittering ship, that hath the plain<br>Of ocean for her own domain.<br>Lie silent in your graves, ye dead!<br>Lie quiet in your churchyard bed!<br>Ye living, tend your holy cares;<br>Ye multitude, pursue your prayers; <br>And blame not me if my heart and sight<br>Are occupied with one delight!<br>'Tis a work for sabbath hours<br>If I with this bright Creature go:<br>Whether she be of forest bowers,<br>From the bowers of earth below;<br>Or a Spirit for one day given,<br>A pledge of grace from purest heaven.<br>What harmonious pensive changes<br>Wait upon her as she ranges <br>Round and through this Pile of state<br>Overthrown and desolate!<br>Now a step or two her way<br>Leads through space of open day,<br>Where the enamoured sunny light<br>Brightens her that was so bright;<br>Now doth a delicate shadow fall,<br>Falls upon her like a breath,<br>From some lofty arch or wall,<br>As she passes underneath: <br>Now some gloomy nook partakes<br>Of the glory that she makes,--<br>High-ribbed vault of stone, or cell,<br>With perfect cunning framed as well<br>Of stone, and ivy, and the spread<br>Of the elder's bushy head;<br>Some jealous and forbidding cell,<br>That doth the living stars repel,<br>And where no flower hath leave to dwell.<br>The presence of this wandering Doe <br>Fills many a damp obscure recess<br>With lustre of a saintly show;<br>And, reappearing, she no less<br>Sheds on the flowers that round her blow<br>A more than sunny liveliness.<br>But say, among these holy places,<br>Which thus assiduously she paces,<br>Comes she with a votary's task,<br>Rite to perform, or boon to ask?<br>Fair Pilgrim! harbours she a sense <br>Of sorrow, or of reverence?<br>Can she be grieved for quire or shrine,<br>Crushed as if by wrath divine?<br>For what survives of house where God<br>Was worshipped, or where Man abode;<br>For old magnificence undone;<br>Or for the gentler work begun<br>By Nature, softening and concealing,<br>And busy with a hand of healing?<br>Mourns she for lordly chamber's hearth <br>That to the sapling ash gives birth;<br>For dormitory's length laid bare<br>Where the wild rose blossoms fair;<br>Or altar, whence the cross was rent,<br>Now rich with mossy ornament?<br>--She sees a warrior carved in stone,<br>Among the thick weeds, stretched alone;<br>A warrior, with his shield of pride<br>Cleaving humbly to his side,<br>And hands in resignation prest, <br>Palm to palm, on his tranquil breast;<br>As little she regards the sight<br>As a common creature might:<br>If she be doomed to inward care,<br>Or service, it must lie elsewhere.<br>--But hers are eyes serenely bright,<br>And on she moves--with pace how light!<br>Nor spares to stoop her head, and taste<br>The dewy turf with flowers bestrown;<br>And thus she fares, until at last <br>Beside the ridge of a grassy grave<br>In quietness she lays her down;<br>Gentle as a weary wave<br>Sinks, when the summer breeze hath died,<br>Against an anchored vessel's side;<br>Even so, without distress, doth she<br>Lie down in peace, and lovingly.<br>The day is placid in its going,<br>To a lingering motion bound,<br>Like the crystal stream now flowing <br>With its softest summer sound:<br>So the balmy minutes pass,<br>While this radiant Creature lies<br>Couched upon the dewy grass,<br>Pensively with downcast eyes.<br>--But now again the people raise<br>With awful cheer a voice of praise;<br>It is the last, the parting song;<br>And from the temple forth they throng,<br>And quickly spread themselves abroad, <br>While each pursues his several road.<br>But some--a variegated band<br>Of middle-aged, and old, and young,<br>And little children by the hand<br>Upon their leading mothers hung--<br>With mute obeisance gladly paid<br>Turn towards the spot, where, full in view,<br>The white Doe, to her service true,<br>Her sabbath couch has made.<br>It was a solitary mound; <br>Which two spears' length of level ground<br>Did from all other graves divide:<br>As if in some respect of pride;<br>Or melancholy's sickly mood,<br>Still shy of human neighbourhood;<br>Or guilt, that humbly would express<br>A penitential loneliness.<br>'Look, there she is, my Child! draw near;<br>She fears not, wherefore should we fear?<br>She means no harm;'--but still the Boy, <br>To whom the words were softly said,<br>Hung back, and smiled, and blushed for joy,<br>A shame-faced blush of glowing red!<br>Again the Mother whispered low,<br>'Now you have seen the famous Doe;<br>From Rylstone she hath found her way<br>Over the hills this sabbath day<br>Her work, whate'er it be, is done,<br>And she will depart when we are gone;<br>Thus doth she keep, from year to year, <br>Her sabbath morning, foul or fair.'<br>Bright was the Creature, as in dreams<br>The Boy had seen her, yea, more bright;<br>But is she truly what she seems?<br>He asks with insecure delight,<br>Asks of himself, and doubts,--and still<br>The doubt returns against his will:<br>Though he, and all the standers-by,<br>Could tell a tragic history<br>Of facts divulged, wherein appear <br>Substantial motive, reason clear,<br>Why thus the milk-white Doe is found<br>Couchant beside that lonely mound;<br>And why she duly loves to pace<br>The circuit of this hallowed place.<br>Nor to the Child's inquiring mind<br>Is such perplexity confined:<br>For, spite of sober Truth that sees<br>A world of fixed remembrances<br>Which to this mystery belong, <br>If, undeceived, my skill can trace<br>The characters of every face,<br>There lack not strange delusion here,<br>Conjecture vague, and idle fear,<br>And superstitious fancies strong,<br>Which do the gentle Creature wrong.<br>That bearded, staff-supported Sire--<br>Who in his boyhood often fed<br>Full cheerily on convent-bread<br>And heard old tales by the convent-fire, <br>And to his grave will go with scars,<br>Relics of long and distant wars--<br>That Old Man, studious to expound<br>The spectacle, is mounting high<br>To days of dim antiquity;<br>When Lady Aaliza mourned<br>Her Son, and felt in her despair<br>The pang of unavailing prayer;<br>Her Son in Wharf's abysses drowned,<br>The noble Boy of Egremound. <br>From which affliction--when the grace<br>Of God had in her heart found place--<br>A pious structure, fair to see<br>Rose up, this stately Priory!<br>The Lady's work;--but now laid low;<br>To the grief of her soul that doth come and go,<br>In the beautiful form of this innocent Doe:<br>Which, though seemingly doomed in its breast to sustain<br>A softened remembrance of sorrow and pain,<br>Is spotless, and holy, and gentle, and bright; <br>And glides o'er the earth like an angel of light.<br>Pass, pass who will, yon chantry door;<br>And, through the chink in the fractured floor<br>Look down, and see a griesly sight;<br>A vault where the bodies are buried upright!<br>There, face by face, and hand by hand,<br>The Claphams and Mauleverers stand;<br>And, in his place, among son and sire,<br>Is John de Clapham, that fierce Esquire,<br>A valiant man, and a name of dread <br>In the ruthless wars of the White and Red;<br>Who dragged Earl Pembroke from Banbury church<br>And smote off his head on the stones of the porch!<br>Look down among them, if you dare;<br>Oft does the White Doe loiter there,<br>Prying into the darksome rent;<br>Nor can it be with good intent:<br>So thinks that Dame of haughty air,<br>Who hath a Page her book to hold,<br>And wears a frontlet edged with gold. <br>Harsh thoughts with her high mood agree--<br>Who counts among her ancestry<br>Earl Pembroke, slain so impiously!<br>That slender Youth, a scholar pale,<br>From Oxford come to his native vale,<br>He also hath his own conceit:<br>It is, thinks he, the gracious Fairy,<br>Who loved the Shepherd-lord to meet<br>In his wanderings solitary:<br>Wild notes she in his hearing sang, <br>A song of Nature's hidden powers;<br>That whistled like the wind, and rang<br>Among the rocks and holly bowers.<br>'Twas said that She all shapes could wear;<br>And oftentimes before him stood,<br>Amid the trees of some thick wood,<br>In semblance of a lady fair;<br>And taught him signs, and showed him sights,<br>In Craven's dens, on Cumbrian heights;<br>When under cloud of fear he lay, <br>A shepherd clad in homely grey;<br>Nor left him at his later day.<br>And hence, when he, with spear and shield,<br>Rode full of years to Flodden-field,<br>His eye could see the hidden spring,<br>And how the current was to flow;<br>The fatal end of Scotland's King,<br>And all that hopeless overthrow.<br>But not in wars did he delight,<br>'This' Clifford wished for worthier might; <br>Nor in broad pomp, or courtly state;<br>Him his own thoughts did elevate,--<br>Most happy in the shy recess<br>Of Barden's lowly quietness.<br>And choice of studious friends had he<br>Of Bolton's dear fraternity;<br>Who, standing on this old church tower,<br>In many a calm propitious hour,<br>Perused, with him, the starry sky;<br>Or, in their cells, with him did pry <br>For other lore,--by keen desire<br>Urged to close toil with chemic fire;<br>In quest belike of transmutations<br>Rich as the mine's most bright creations.<br>But they and their good works are fled,<br>And all is now disquieted--<br>And peace is none, for living or dead!<br>Ah, pensive Scholar, think not so,<br>But look again at the radiant Doe!<br>What quiet watch she seems to keep, <br>Alone, beside that grassy heap!<br>Why mention other thoughts unmeet<br>For vision so composed and sweet?<br>While stand the people in a ring,<br>Gazing, doubting, questioning;<br>Yea, many overcome in spite<br>Of recollections clear and bright;<br>Which yet do unto some impart<br>An undisturbed repose of heart.<br>And all the assembly own a law <br>Of orderly respect and awe;<br>But see--they vanish one by one,<br>And last, the Doe herself is gone.<br>Harp! we have been full long beguiled<br>By vague thoughts, lured by fancies wild;<br>To which, with no reluctant strings,<br>Thou hast attuned thy murmurings;<br>And now before this Pile we stand<br>In solitude, and utter peace:<br>But, Harp! thy murmurs may not cease-- <br>A Spirit, with his angelic wings,<br>In soft and breeze-like visitings,<br>Has touched thee--and a Spirit's hand:<br>A voice is with us--a command<br>To chant, in strains of heavenly glory,<br>A tale of tears, a mortal story!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Wordsworth">William Wordsworth</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=540188" data-title="The White Doe Of Rylstone, Or, The Fate Of The Nortons - Canto First de William Wordsworth" data-description="FROM Bolton's old monastic tower The bells ring loud with gladsome power; The sun shines bright; the fields are gay With people in their best array Of stole and doublet, hood and scarf, Along the banks of crystal Wharf, Through the Vale retired an..."></div> </div> </div>

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