You said, (oh, not in vain you said,) 25 ‘Haste, brothers, haste, while yet we may; The hours ebb fast of this one day, When blood may yet be nobly shed.’ Ah! not for idle hatred, not For honour, fame, nor self-applause, 30 But for the glory of the cause, You did, what will not be forgot. And though the stranger stand, ’tis true, By force and fortune’s right he stands; By fortune, which is in God’s hands, 35 And strength, which yet shall spring in you. This voice did on my spirit fall, Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost, ‘’Tis better to have fought and lost, Than never to have fought at all.’ 40 _Arthur Hugh Clough._ CCXXVI _LINES SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE IN A STORM, PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT._ I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile! Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee: I saw thee every day; and all the while Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea. So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! 5 So like, so very like, was day to day! Whene’er I looked, thy image still was there; It trembled, but it never passed away. How perfect was the calm! It seemed no sleep, No mood, which season takes away, or brings: 10 I could have fancied that the mighty Deep Was even the gentlest of all gentle things. Ah! then, if mine had been the painter’s hand To express what then I saw; and add the gleam, The light that never was, on sea or land, 15 The consecration, and the poet’s dream,-- I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile, Amid a world how different from this! Beside a sea that could not cease to smile; On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 20 Thou should’st have seemed a treasure-house divine Of peaceful years, a chronicle of heaven; Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine The very sweetest had to thee been given. A picture had it been of lasting ease, 25 Elysian quiet, without toil or strife; No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life. Such, in the fond illusion of my heart, Such picture would I at that time have made; 30 And seen the soul of truth in every part, A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed. So once it would have been,--’tis so no more; I have submitted to a new control: A power is gone, which nothing can restore; 35 A deep distress hath humanized my soul.