Although
we fought the banded world alone,
We swear to guard our own.
We swear to guard our own.
Tennyson
God save the Nation,
The toleration,
And the free speech that makes a Briton known.
Britons, guard your own.
Rome's dearest daughter now is captive France,
The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance,
Would, unrelenting,
Kill all dissenting,
Till we were left to fight for truth alone.
Britons, guard your own.
Call home your ships across Biscayan tides,
To blow the battle from their oaken sides.
Why waste they yonder
Their idle thunder?
Why stay they there to guard a foreign throne?
Seamen, guard your own.
We were the best of marksmen long ago,
We won old battles with our strength, the bow.
Now practise, yeomen,
Like those bowmen,
Till your balls fly as their true shafts have flown.
Yeomen, guard your own.
His soldier-ridden Highness might incline
To take Sardinia, Belgium, or the Rhine:
Shall we stand idle,
Nor seek to bridle
His vile aggressions, till we stand alone?
Make their cause your own.
Should he land here, and for one hour prevail,
There must no man go back to bear the tale:
No man to bear it--
Swear it! We swear it!
Although we fought the banded world alone,
We swear to guard our own.
XLVIII
=Hands all Round=
[Published in _The Examiner_, February 7, 1852. Reprinted, slightly
altered, in Life, vol. I, p. 345. Included, almost entirely
re-written, in collected Works. ]
First drink a health, this solemn night,
A health to England, every guest;
That man's the best cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
May Freedom's oak for ever live
With stronger life from day to day;
That man's the best Conservative
Who lops the mouldered branch away.
Hands all round!
God the tyrant's hope confound!
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,
And the great name of England round and round.
A health to Europe's honest men!
Heaven guard them from her tyrants' jails!
From wronged Poerio's noisome den,
From iron limbs and tortured nails!
We curse the crimes of Southern kings,
The Russian whips and Austrian rods--
We likewise have our evil things;
Too much we make our Ledgers, Gods.
Yet hands all round!
