The White Doe Of Rylstone (Unabridged)

A narrative poem in seven cantos, set during the Northern Rebellion of 1569. A group of Catholic nobleman from the North of England attempt to unseat Queen Elizabeth I and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. They are soon routed and Elizabeth's forces exact their revenge on the people of the Yorkshire Dales. Inspired by a visit to Bolton Abbey, Wordsworth's poem details the sad fate of one Catholic family whose patriarch decides to lend support to the rebellion. Although it is not among his most popular poems, Wordsworth himself considered The White Doe of Rylstone to be one of his finest.

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.