r 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 have 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. The heroine of the poem knows that her duty is not to
interfere with the current of events, either to forward or delay them,
but

to abide
The shock, and finally secure
O'er pain and grief a triumph pure.

This she does in obedience to her brother's injunction, as most suitable
to a mind and character that, under previous trials, has been proved to
accord with his. She achieves this not without aid from the
communication with the inferior Creature, which often leads her thoughts
to revolve upon the past with a tender and humanising influence that
exalts rather than depresses her. The anticipated beatification, if I
may so say, of her mind, and the apotheosis of the companion of her
solitude, are the points at which the Poem aims, and constitute its
legitimate catastrophe, far too spiritual a one for instant or
widely-spread sympathy, but not, therefore, the less fitted to make a
deep and permanent impression upon that class of minds who think and
feel more independently, than the many do, of the surfaces of things and
interests transitory, because belonging more to the outward and social
forms of life than to its internal spirit. How insignificant a thing,
for example, does personal prowess appear compared with the fortitude of
patience and heroic martyrdom; in other words, with struggles for the
sake of principle, in preference to victory gloried in for its own
sake.--I. F.]

DEDICATION

I

In trellised shed with clustering roses gay,[B]
And, MARY! oft beside our blazing fire,
When years of wedded life were as a day
Whose current answers to the heart's desire,
Did we together read in Spenser's Lay 5
How Una, sad of soul--in sad attire,
The gentle Una, of celestial birth,[1]
To seek her Knight went wandering o'er the earth.

II

Ah, then, Beloved! pleasing was the smart,
And the tear precious in compassion s