the
woods. Here a tributary stream rushes from a waterfall, and bursts
through a woody glen to mingle its waters with the Wharf: there
the Wharf itself is nearly lost in a deep cleft in the rock, and
next becomes a horned flood enclosing a woody island--sometimes it
reposes for a moment, and then resumes its native character,
lively, irregular, and impetuous.

"'The cleft mentioned above is the tremendous STRID. This chasm,
being incapable of receiving the winter floods, has formed, on
either side, a broad strand of naked gritstone full of
rock-basons, or "pots of the Linn," which bear witness to the
restless impetuosity of so many Northern torrents. But, if here
Wharf is lost to the eye, it amply repays another sense by its
deep and solemn roar, like "the Voice of the angry Spirit of the
Waters," heard far above and beneath, amidst the silence of the
surrounding woods.

"'The terminating object of the landscape is the remains of Barden
Tower, interesting from their form and situation, and still more
so from the recollections which they excite.'"

* * * * *

_The White Doe of Rylstone_ has been assigned chronologically to the
year 1808; although part of it--probably the larger half--was written
during the autumn of the previous year, and it remained unfinished in
1810, while the Dedication was not written till 1815. In the Fenwick
note, Wordsworth tells us that the "earlier half" was written at
Stockton-on-Tees "at the close" of 1807, and "proceeded with" at Dove
Cottage, after his return to Grasmere, which was in April 1808. But on
the 28th February, 1810, Dorothy Wordsworth, writing from Allan Bank to
Lady Beaumont, says, "Before my brother turns to any other labour, I
hope he will have finished three books of _The Recluse_. He seldom
writes less than 50 lines every day. After this task is finished he
hopes to complete _The White Doe_, and proud should we all be if it
should be honoured by a frontispiece from the pencil of Sir George
Beaumont. Perhaps this is not impossible, if you come into the north
next summer."

A frontispiece was drawn by Sir George Beaumont for the quarto edition
of 1815.

When part of the poem was finished, Wordsworth showed it to Southey; and
Southey, writing to Walter Scott, in February 1808, said,--

"Wordsworth has just completed a most masterly poem upon the fate
of the Nortons; two or three lines in the old