Most glorious sunset! and a ray Survives--the twilight of this day-- In that fair Creature whom the fields Support, and whom the forest shields; Who, having filled a holy place, 325 Partakes, in her degree, Heaven's grace; And bears a memory and a mind Raised far above the law of kind;[WW] Haunting the spots with lonely cheer Which her dear Mistress once held dear: 330 Loves most what Emily loved most-- The enclosure of this church-yard ground; Here wanders like a gliding ghost, And every sabbath here is found; Comes with the people when the bells 335 Are heard among the moorland dells, Finds entrance through yon arch, where way Lies open on the sabbath-day; Here walks amid the mournful waste Of prostrate altars, shrines defaced, 340 And floors encumbered with rich show Of fret-work imagery laid low; Paces softly, or makes halt, By fractured cell, or tomb, or vault; By plate of monumental brass 345 Dim-gleaming among weeds and grass, And sculptured Forms of Warriors brave: But chiefly by that single grave, That one sequestered hillock green, The pensive visitant is seen. 350 There doth the gentle Creature lie With those adversities unmoved; Calm spectacle, by earth and sky In their benignity approved! And aye, methinks, this hoary Pile, 355 Subdued by outrage and decay, Looks down upon her with a smile, A gracious smile, that seems to say-- "Thou, thou art not a Child of Time, But Daughter of the Eternal Prime!" 360 The following is the full text of the first "note" to _The White Doe of Rylstone_, published in the quarto edition of 1815. The other notes to that edition are printed in this, at the foot of the pages where they occur:-- "The Poem of _The White Doe of Rylstone_ is founded on a local tradition, and on the Ballad in Percy's Collection, entitled _The Rising of the North_. The tradition is as follows: 'About this time,' not long after the Dissolution, 'a White Doe, say the aged people of the neighbourhood, long continued to make a weekly pilgrimage from Rylstone over the fells of Bolton, and was constantly found in the Abbey Church-yard during divine service; after the close of which she returned home as regularly as the rest of the congregation.'--Dr. WHITAKER'S _History of the Deanery of Craven_.--Rylstone was the property and residence of the Nortons, distinguished in that ill-advised and unfortunate Insurrection, which led me to connect with this tradition the principal circumstances of their fate, as recorded in the Ballad which I have thought it proper to annex. _The Rising in the North._