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 principle announced in the preface to the “Lyrical Ballads”—­that the feeling should give importance to the incidents and situation, not the incidents and situation to the feeling—­Wordsworth treats all this outward action as merely preparatory to the true purpose of his poem, a study of the discipline of sorrow, of ruin and bereavement patiently endured by the Lady Emily, the only daughter and survivor of the Norton house.

  “Action is transitory—­a step, a blow. . . . 
  Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
  And has the nature of infinity. 
  Yet through that darkness (infinite though it seem
  And irremoveable) gracious openings lie. . . . 
  Even to the fountain-head of peace divine.”

With the story of the Nortons the poet connects a local tradition which he found in Whitaker’s “History of the Deanery of Craven”; of a white doe which haunted the churchyard of Bolton Priory.  Between this gentle creature and the forlorn Lady of Rylstone he establishes the mysterious and soothing sympathy which he was always fond of imagining between the soul of man and the things of nature.[20]