TENNYSON AND TODAY
SIR,—Perhaps, in this hour of destiny, some of your readers may welcome a heartening voice from the past. What did Tennyson sae nearly ninety years ago? Here is a verse from " Britons, guard your
- own": " Should they land here and but one hour prevail, There must no man go back to tell the talc; No man to bear it, Swear it! We swear it!
Although we fought the banded world alone, We swear to guard our own."
Again, in the original version of " Hands All Round " (called by Landor " incomparably the best convivial poem in the language ") we find these lines, which will wake an answering echo today:
" Should war's mad blast again be blown, Permit not thou the tyrant powers To fight thy mother here alone, But let thy broadsides roar with ours."
So he appeals to that " Gigantic Daughter of the West." These two pieces will not be found in Tennyson's works, but they appear in Hallam Tennyson's Memoir of his great father. They deserve
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