e White Doe,
and makes her the exponent, the symbol, the embodiment of them all. The
one central aim--to represent the beatification of the heroine--how was
this to be attained? Had it been a drama, the poet would have made the
heroine give forth in speeches, her hidden mind and character. But this
was a romantic narrative. Was the poet to make her soliloquise, analyse
her own feelings, lay bare her heart in metaphysical monologue? This
might have been done by some modern poets, but it was not Wordsworth's
way of exhibiting character, reflective though he was. When he analyses
feelings they are generally his own, not those of his characters. To
shadow forth that which is invisible, the sanctity of Emily's chastened
soul, he lays hold of this sensible image--a creature, the purest, most
innocent, most beautiful in the whole realm of nature--and makes her the
vehicle in which he embodies the saintliness which is a thing invisible.
It is the hardest of all tasks to make spiritual things sensuous,
without degrading them. I know not where this difficulty has been more
happily met; for we are made to feel that, before the poem closes, the
Doe has ceased to be a mere animal, or a physical creature at all, but
in the light of the poet's imagination, has been transfigured into a
heavenly apparition--a type of all that is pure, and affecting, and
saintly. And not only the chastened soul of her mistress, but the
beautiful Priory of Bolton, the whole Vale of Wharfe, and all the
surrounding scenery, are illumined by the glory which she makes; her
presence irradiates them all with a beauty and an interest more than the
eye discovers. Seen through her as an imaginative transparency, they
become spiritualized; in fact, she and they alike become the symbol and
expression of the sentiment which pervades the poem--a sentiment broad
and deep as the world. And yet, any one who visits these scenes, in a
mellow autumnal day, will feel that she is no alien or adventitious
image, imported by the caprice of the poet, but altogether native to the
place, one which gathers up and concentrates all the undefined spirit
and sentiment which lie spread around it. She both glorifies the scenery
by her presence, and herself seems to be a natural growth of the
scenery, so that it finds in her its most appropriate utterance. This
power of imagination to divine and project the very corporeal image
which suits and expresses the image of a scene, Wordsworth has