Note E — THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE;
Reading edition
The above extract, which, in 1837 and subsequent editions, follows the Dedication of the poem to Mrs. Wordsworth, is taken from the tragedy of The Borderers, act III. line 405 (vol. i. p. 187). In the prefatory note to The Borderers—published in 1842—Wordsworth says he would not have made use of these lines in The White Doe of Rylstone if he could have foreseen the time when he would be induced to publish the tragedy. It is signed M. S. in the 1837-43 editions.
In a note to the edition of 1837, he says, "'Action is transitory,' etc. This and the five lines that follow were either read or recited by me, more than thirty years since, to the late Mr. Hazlitt, who quoted some expressions in them (imperfectly remembered) in a work of his published several years ago."
In the quarto edition of 1815 the following lines precede the extract from Lord Bacon; and in the edition of 1820 they follow it. In 1827 they were transferred to the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."
"Weak is the will of Man, his judgement blind; Remembrance persecutes, and Hope betrays; Heavy is woe;—and joy, for human kind, A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze!"— Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days Who wants the glorious faculty, assigned To elevate the more-than-reasoning Mind, And colour life's dark cloud with orient rays. Imagination is that sacred power, Imagination lofty and refined: 'Tis her's to pluck the amaranthine Flower Of Faith, and round the Sufferer's temples bind Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.Ed.