Baxter stands awestruck by the poem, and Perowne speculates that he is experiencing a profound, moving nostalgia that reminds him "how much he wanted to live" (278). Although Baxter's mind is being eaten away by Huntington's, his mood swing here takes on a broader implication, connecting him to a cultural or civilizational consciousness in which he is immersed for all his disenfranchisement. The miraculously pacifying qualities of the poem's slow incantation by Daisy, soothing the savage breast of a man intent on violence, gives it a privileged power in the book. … The argument is not simply that personal affection and tenderness may act as a protection against the chaos of a world threatened by "ignorant armies" on the march but also that the values of culture and education as a bulwark against the ignorant, rebellious masses advanced by Arnold in his broader work appear somehow revived and retooled for application in the modern world.

XREF: Connects to Matthew Arnold's cultural criticism and the idea of high culture as a civilizing bulwark.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 116