That knowledge takes the sword away.[1]

[1] "Poems," p. 182, ed. 1853. See also "Locksley Hall," p. 278.

And again in "The Golden Dream,"--

When shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land?

And yet once more in a noble piece of "In Memoriam,"--

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

But on the other hand we must recollect that very long ago, when the
apparition of invasion from across the Channel had as yet spoiled no
man's slumbers, Mr. Tennyson's blood was already up:[2]--

For the French, the Pope may shrive them ...
And the merry devil drive them
Through the water and the fire.

[2] "Poems chiefly Lyrical," 1830, p. 142.

And unhappily in the beginning of "Maud," when still in the best use of
such wits as he possesses, its hero deals largely in kindred
extravagances (p. 7):--

When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones,
Is it peace or war? better war! loud war by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.

He then anticipates that, upon an enemy's attacking this country, "the
smooth-faced, snub-nosed rogue," who typifies the bulk of the British
people, "the nation of shopkeepers," as it has been emasculated and
corrupted by excess of peace, will leap from his counter and till to
charge the enemy; and thus it is to be reasonably hoped that we shall
attain to the effectual renovation of society.

We frankly own that our divining rod does not enable us to say whether
the poet intends to be in any and what degree sponsor to these
sentiments, or whether he has put them forth in the exercise of his
undoubted right to make vivid and suggestive representations of even the
partial and narrow aspects of some endangered truth. This is at best,
indeed, a perilous business, for out of such fervid partial
representations nearly all grave human error springs; and it should only
be pursued with caution and in season. But we do not recollect that 1855
was a season of serious danger from a mania for peace and its pursuits;
and even if it had been so, we fear that the passages we have quoted far
overpass all the bounds of moderation and good sense. It is, indeed,
true that peace has its moral perils