The Works of Tennyson :: :: University of Virginia Library

Cf. Sedgwick's Life, ii. 103.—Extract of a letter from J. Eaton, a private serving in the Battle of Aliwal, 1846, and a son of two of Sedgwick's servants:

“Also, my dear mother, tell Rhoda Harding I thought of her in the battle's heat, and that as I cut at the enemy and parried their thrusts my arm was strong on her account; for I felt at that moment that I loved her more than ever, and may God Almighty bless her.”

Sedgwick's comment: “This is, I think, exquisitely beautiful, for it is the strong language of pure feeling in the hour of severest trial.”

My first version of this song was published in Selections, 1865:

And gives the battle to his hands.

And strikes him dead for thine and thee.

That beat to battle where he stands;
Thy face across his fancy comes,
And gives the battle to his hands:
A moment, while the trumpets blow,
He sees his brood about thy knee;
The next, like fire he meets the foe,
And strikes him dead for thine and thee.

So Lilia sang: we thought her half-possess'd,
She struck such warbling fury thro' the words;
And, after, feigning pique at what she call'd
The raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime—
Like one that wishes at a dance to change
The music—clapt her hands and cried for war,
Or some grand fight to kill and make an end:
And he that next inherited the tale
Half turning to the broken statue, said,
‘Sir Ralph has got your colours: if I prove
Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me?’
It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb
Lay by her like a model of her hand.

She took it and she flung it. ‘Fight’ she said,
‘And make us all we would be, great and good.’
He knightlike in his cap instead of casque,
A cap of Tyrol borrow'd from the hall,
Arranged the favour, and assumed the Prince.