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! 
    God the tyrant’s cause confound! 
  To Europe’s better health we drink, my friends,
    And the great name of England round and round.

  What health to France, if France be she
    Whom martial progress only charms? 
  Yet tell her—­better to be free
    Than vanquish all the world in arms. 
  Her frantic city’s flashing heats
    But fire, to blast the hopes of men. 
  Why change the titles of your streets? 
    You fools, you’ll want them all again. 
          Hands all round! 
    God the tyrant’s cause confound! 
  To France, the wiser France, we drink, my friends,
    And the great name of England round and round.

  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.

  O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,
    When war against our freedom springs! 
  O speak to Europe through your guns! 
  They can be understood by kings. 
  You must not mix our Queen with those
    That wish to keep their people fools;
  Our freedom’s foemen are her foes,
    She comprehends the race she rules. 
          Hands all round! 
    God the tyrant’s cause confound! 
  To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,
    And the great name of England round and round.

XLIX

=Suggested by Reading an Article in a Newspaper=

[Published in The Examiner, February 14, 1852, and never reprinted nor acknowledged.  The proof sheets of the poem, with alterations in Tennyson’s autograph, were offered for public sale in 1906.]

To the Editor of The Examiner.

SIR,—­I have read with much interest the poems of Merlin.  The enclosed is longer than either of those, and certainly not so good:  yet as I flatter myself that it has a smack of Merlin’s style in it, and as I feel that it expresses forcibly enough some of the feelings of our time, perhaps you may be induced to admit it.

TALIESSEN.

  How much I love this writer’s manly style! 
    By such men led, our press had ever been
  The public conscience of our noble isle,
    Severe and quick to feel a civic sin,
  To raise the people and chastise the times
  With such a heat as lives in great creative rhymes.