Gigantic daughter of the West,

We drink to thee across the flood

We know thee most, we love thee best
For art thou not of British blood?

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
Hands all round!

God the tyrant's cause confound!

To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,

And the great name of England round and round!

Tennyson believed in recognising the solidarity of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race.

We should have had many martial songs from Tennyson had he condescended to write for popularity, and to make money. But even in his days of poverty he refused the repeated solicitations of his friends to write short, popular pieces in the magazines. He published only what he thought was worthy of himself, and for the good of the public. "Popularity," he said in later life, "is a bastard fame which sometimes goes with the more real thing, but is independent of, and somewhat antagonistic to it." He was evidently not of the opinion of that "wise man" quoted by Fletcher of Saltoun, who said, "Give me the making of the ballads of a nation, and I care not who makes their laws." The truth is that, as in the case of hymns, which he steadily declined to compose, though Jowett and others urged him often, Tennyson could not and would not be commonplace.

Nevertheless, that our Laureate could write a simple song in a rattling metre suitable for a catching music, is proved by his unpublished "Song for sailors," called Jack Tar, written in 1859, of which I quote one

verse

They say some foreign powers have laid their heads together
To break the pride of Britain, and bring her on her knees
There's a treaty, so they tell us, of some dishonest fellows
To break the noble pride of the Mistress of the Seas,
Up, Jack Tars, and save us,

The whole world shall not brave us!

Up, and save the pride of the Mistress of the Seas.

To Tennyson it was both a duty and a pleasure to record the noble deeds of arms of our soldiers and sailors in poetry worthy of them. Accordingly, we have those immortal, soul-stirring pieces from his pen-“The Charge of the Light Brigade," the "Defence of Lucknow," and the "Revenge." But it was far from his intention to make us a nation of Jingoes. Yet he felt that we Britons, who live in this peaceful land, being free as yet (thank God!) from the compulsory military service of other nations, ought to be often reminded of the gallant deeds of the brave men who serve their country with such selfsacrificing devotion, by day and night, in all weathers and in all climates, however rigorous or deadly.

When Rudyard Kipling drops his barrack-room slang, of which we have had enough, and writes in his best mood of inspiration such poems as "Our Lady of Snows, "The Flag of England," and the "Recessional," I feel that the mantle of Tennyson, as a soldier's poet, has fallen upon his shoulders. It is interesting to note in the Life (ii, 392) that one verse of Tennyson's unpublished Dedication, "To the Queen, 1851," is the epitome of Kipling's inspiring "Flag of England," printed in 1891, which the aged Laureate read and praised.

This verse runs as follows; it is a condensed poem :

Your name is blown on every wind,

Your flag through Austral ice is borne
And glimmers to the Northern morn

And floats in either golden Ind.

I would that the younger poet's "Flag of England" and "Recessional" were printed in every school book of poetry throughout Great Britain.

Tennyson has not escaped severe criticism for the expressions of war-feeling in the poem of "Maud." But I well remember how the anti-Russian sentiment pervaded the whole country during the Crimean war,-that huge blunder into which we were cajoled by Louis Napoleon for his own purposes; and of course the Laureate shared it. I admit that, seeing that John Bright, a worthy and consistent statesman and the leader of the peace party, was a Quaker, that phrase in "Maud," "a broad-brimmed hawker of holy things," whose "ear is crammed with his cotton," was an unfortunate one. The poet afterwards explained that no personality whatever was intended, but only a general condemnation of the opponents of the war. He also called attention to his limitation of justifiable war in the last canto of the poem, where the hero says:

I swear to you, lawful and lawless war

Are scarcely even akin.

But further, in order to explain his principles as to war and peace, Tennyson wrote a delightful little epilogue to his "Charge of the Heavy Brigade," in the form of a dialogue between Irene (Peace) and the Poet. Irene reproaches the Poet thus:

You praise when you should blame

The barbarism of wars

A juster epoch has begun.

The Poet answers:

You wrong me, passionate little friend,
I would that wars should cease;

I would the globe from end to end

Might sow and reap in peace.

But there are occasions, the Poet goes on to say, when a

man

Needs must fight

To make true peace his own:

He needs must combat might with might

Or Might would rule alone;

And who loves War for War's own sake

Is fool, or crazed, or worse;

But let the patriot-soldier take
His meed of fame in verse.

I think you will agree with me that this is a reasonable and eloquent defence. And any impartial mind will recognise, in studying Tennyson's collected poems, that the author of "The Golden Year," the English "Idylls," and the two "Locksley Halls" must have loved peace and all its accompanying blessings. Although he sometimes said, "Peace at all price implies war at all cost," he personally hated war, and longed with his whole soul for that millennial time

When the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle flags are furled,

In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World:
Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion killed,
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert tilled.

Meantime, however, while the continent of Europe is an armed camp, with its six Great Powers ready to place twelve millions of trained soldiers in the field should war break out, we cannot expect to attain this happy condition before wading through an Armageddon of blood.

And now let us briefly glance at Tennyson's most popular war-song, which is recited with applause to this

day, and which perhaps in another generation may be the sole popular memorial of the Crimean war-"The Charge of the Light Brigade." The poet wrote it in a few minutes—a pure inspiration--basing it upon the number, six hundred, of the troopers engaged, and the phrase in the Times' report of the Battle of Balaclava, "someone had blundered." Its very metre is admirably suggestive of a charge of horsemen, eager and impetuous, yet rhythmical.*

From its wonderfully inspiriting effect on our soldiers, who were then suffering great hardships, and dying in numbers from disease, exposure and privation rather than from slaughter in battle, Tennyson has been called "the Tyrtæus of the War." "The greatest service you can do," wrote an army chaplain to the S.P.G. Society, "is to send out Tennyson's Charge at Balaclava.' It is the greatest favourite with the soldiers; half are singing it, and all want it in black and white." Among the many good stories told in the Life of Tennyson of the bracing effect of this piece, I have only space for one. Some years after the conclusion of peace with Russia, an American clergyman wrote to Tennyson, telling him of a singular experience of his own. One Sunday, when he was in his pulpit and about to preach his sermon, overmastered by an uncontrollable impulse, he recited "The Charge of the Light Brigade "-to the great scandal and indignation, naturally, of his congregation. Some days later a man called upon him and said, "Sir, I am one of the survivors of the Balaclava Charge. I have led a wild, bad life, and haven't been near a church till, by accident and from curiosity, I went into your church last Sunday. I heard you recite that great poem, and it has changed my life I shall never disgrace my cloth again." "So," *"Half a league, half a league, half a league onward," etc.