Dovrr Beach

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BY MATTHEW ARNOLD - CRITICAL APPRECIATION

The sea is calm to-night,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;-on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,

Listen! You hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.

But now I can only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach is Matthew Arnold's best known poem. Written in 1851 it was inspired by two visits he and his new wife Frances made to the

south coast of England, where the white cliffs of Dover stand, just

twenty two miles from the coast of France.

Many claim it to be a honeymoon poem.

A reluctant poet, Arnold said of poetry: 'More and more mankind will

discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to

console us, to sustain us.'

Arnold's "Dover Beach" presents the reader with a virtual journey

through time. Lamenting the transition from an age of certainty into an

era of erosion of traditions - Modernism - is the backbone of all four

stanzas of the poem, brought together in our imagination by the

nostalgic image of the sea. "Misery", "sadness" and "melancholy" reign

most of the poem, yet the author chooses to conclude it with an

emotional appeal for honesty: "Ah, love, let us be true/ to one another"

- as it is the only true certainty left as the world around collapses under

"struggle" and "fight". The poet's attitude towards the subject of the

poem is revealed through key words, which are also references to a

number of themes in the poem. The most obvious one of these is "the

sea" with its nostalgic nature and ability to represent time and

timelessness simultaneously. "Sadness", "misery", "melancholy", "pain"

accompany this effect and reveal the overall sense of regret and

helplessness the author feels before the powers of time and inevitable

change.

The tone of the piece is determined by the constant presence of

"melancholy" and "misery" in the poem that stretch on into the distance

with a "long withdrawing roar..." The calmness of the narrative voice

with which the piece is set to work ("the sea is calm to-night./ The tide

is full, the moon lies fair.") is essential for the descriptive nature of the

first stanza. Yet, later on its role is to emphasise the negativity in the

tone of the poem: "But now I only hear /Its melancholy...", "Into his

mind the turbid ebb and flow /of human misery..." The end of the piece,

however, implies that the alteration of the things around us is

something inevitable. The tone changes in the last verse of the poem in

the sense that it now not simply resents mutability, but is also a tone

pleading with the reader to realise nothing is as stable and reliable as

one perceives it, not to take the world for granted, and to stay "true/ to

one another".

The fundamental issues of the poem are not only obvious in its

conclusion. The theme of Time is being discussed in the second verse,

where Sophocles - an essential historic figure - is referred to. The

mentioning of England and France at the beginning of the first verse can

also be considered a historic reference and therefore - part of the

theme of Time as history is a natural subject of it. Time here is

represented by the image of the sea - with its vastness evoking

powerful admiration. The theme of mutability follows closely because of

the sea's unreliable nature. It is presented as something inevitable and

insecure and, in its turn, leads onto the theme of humans staying true

and honest to one another - this involving love for each other - as the

only way to remain together, "for the world, which seems/ to lie before

us like a land of dreams/ Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light."

The structure of the poem gives the immediate impression of being

inconsistent and built upon no particular rules. There are four verses,

none of which are alike, with no particular rhythm or rhyme pattern. Yet

its tremendous effect on the reader is wittily based upon the impression

of sharing the author's thoughts as we read - it seems easy to identify

with the subject matter just as the latter synchronise with the sea's

waves. The verses lead onto one another by theme although they appear

to be quite unconventionally structured. Thus the end of the first stanza

the image of sea and insecurity of the end of the second verse invites

the beginning of the following and ending verse. The unity of the poem

is in this way complete and its impact on the reader stretches far

beyond the lines.

straits - narrow passages of water

moon-blanched - made white or pale by the moon

tremulous - shaking, quivering

cadence - rhythm

Aegean - sea that lies between Greece and Turkey

turbid - confused,cloudy,obscure

shingle - tiny pebbles, stones on a beach

hath - have (archaic)

certitude - complete certainty,conviction

darkling - growing dark

Further Analysis

Dover Beach is a complex poem about the challenges to theosophical,

existential and moral issues. Important questions are raised after

reading this poem. What is life without faith? How do we gauge

happiness and loneliness? What gives life meaning?

The first stanza starts with a straightforward description of the sea and

the effects of light, but note the change in pace as the syllabic content

forces then relaxes with long and short vowels, mimicking the sea as

wavelets shift the pebbles.

Then in lines 6 and 9 there is an invitation - to come and fill your

senses - for the reader or for the speaker's companion? The speaker,

despite momentary excitement, concludes that the moonstruck sea

evokes sadness, perhaps because of the timeless monotony of the

waves.

A certain melancholy flows into the second stanza. Note the allusion to

Sophocles, a Greek dramatist (496-406BC), which brings a historical

perspective to the poem. His play Antigone has an interesting few lines:

"Happy are they whose life has not tasted evils. But for those whose

house has been shaken by God, no mass of ruin fails to creep upon

their families. It is like the sea-swell...when an undersea darkness

drives upon it with gusts of Thracian wind; it rolls the dark sand from

the depths, and the beaches, beaten by the waves and wind, groan and

roar."

So the tide becomes a metaphor for human misery; it comes in, it goes

out, bringing with it all the detritus, all the beauty and power, contained

in human life. Time and tide wait for no man so the saying goes, but

the waves are indifferent, hypnotically following the cycle of the moon.

Stanza three introduces the idea of religion into the equation. Faith is at

low tide, on its way out, where once it had been full. Christianity can no

longer wash away the sins of humanity; it is on the retreat.

Matthew Arnold was well aware of the profound changes at work in

western society. He knew that the old establishments were beginning to

crumble - people were losing their faith in God as the advancements in

technology and science and evolution encroached.

This vacuum needed to be filled and the speaker in stanza four suggests

that only strong personal love between individuals can withstand the

negative forces in the world. Staying true to each other can bring

meaning to an otherwise confused and confusing world.

Point of View

The poet/persona uses first-, second-, and third-person point of view in

the poem. Generally, the poem presents the observations of the

author/persona in third-person point of view but shifts to second person

when he addresses his beloved, as in line 6 (Come), line 9 (Listen!

you), and line 29 (let). Then he shifts to first-person point of view

when he includes his beloved and the reader as co-observers, as in Line

18 (we), Line 29 (us), Line 31 (us), and line 35 (we). He also uses

first-person point of view to declare that at least one observation is his

alone, and not necessarily that of his co-observers. This instance occurs

in line 24: But now I only hear. This line means But now I alone hear.

It's as if the speaker is looking into the future, with regard for the past,

declaring love for a special companion (or love for all humanity?) to be

the way forward if the world is to be survived.

Wars may rage on, the evolutionary struggle continue, only the

foundation of truth within love can guarantee solace.

“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold is dramatic monologue lamenting the

loss of true Christian faith in England during the mid 1800’s as science

captured the minds of the public. The poet’s speaker, considered to be

Matthew Arnold himself, begins by describing a calm and quiet sea out

in the English Channel. He stands on the Dover coast and looks across

to France where a small light can be seen briefly, and then vanishes.

This light represents the diminishing faith of the English people, and

those the world round. Throughout this poem the speaker/Arnold crafts

an image of the sea receding and returning to land with the faith of the

world as it changes throughout time. At this point in time though, the

sea is not returning. It is receding farther out into the strait.

Faith used to encompass the whole world, holding the populous tight in

its embrace. Now though, it is losing ground to the sciences, particularly

those related to evolution (The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was

published in 1859). The poem concludes pessimistically as the speaker

makes clear to the reader that all the beauty and happiness that one

may believe they are experiencing is not in fact real. The world is

actually without peace, joy, or help for those in need and the human

race is too distracted by its own ignorance to see where true assistance

is needed anymore.

Arnold begins this poem by giving a description of the setting in which

it is taking place. It is clear from the title, although never explicitly

stated in the poem, that the beach in question is Dover, on the coast of

England. The sea is said to be calm, there is beach on the water at full

tide. The moon “lies fair,” lovely, “upon the straits” (a strait is a narrow

passage of water such as the English Channel onto which Dover Beach

abuts).The speaker is able to see across the Channel to the French side

of the water. The lights on the far coast are visibly gleaming, and then

they disappear and the “cliffs of England” are standing by themselves

“vast” and “glimmering” in the bay. The light that shines then vanishes

representing to this speaker, and to Arnold himself, the vanishing faith

of the English people.

No one around him seems to see the enormity of what it happening, the

night is quiet. There is a calm the speaker refers to as “tranquil.” But as

the reader will come to see, many things may seem one way but

actually exist as the opposite.

Now the speaker turns to another person that is in the scene with him,

and asks that this unnamed person comes to the window and breathe in

the “sweet…night-air!”

Perhaps most interestingly, the first stanza switches from visual to

auditory descriptions, including "the grating roar" and "tremulous

cadence slow." The evocation of several senses fills out the experience

more, and creates the sense of an overwhelming and all-encompassing

moment.

The speaker draws his companion’s

attention to the sound that the water makes as it rushes in over the

pebbles on the shore. They roll over one another creating, “the grating

roar.” This happens over and over again as the sea recedes and returns.

The slow cadence of this movement, and its eternal repetitions, seem

sad to the narrator. As if the returning sea is bringing with it, “The

eternal note of sadness in.”

The second stanza is much shorter and relates the world in which the

two characters are in to the larger picture of history. The speaker states

that “long ago” Sophocles also heared this sound on the Ægean sea as

the tides came in. It too brought to his mind the feelings of “human

misery” and how these emotions “ebb and flow.” Sophocles, who

penned the play Antigone, is one of the best known dramatic writers of

Ancient Greece.

In the third stanza of the poem it becomes clear that Arnold is in fact

speaking about the diminishing faith of his countrymen and women. He

describes, “The Sea of Faith” once covered all of the “round earth’s

shore” and held everyone together like a girdle. Now though, this time

as passed. No longer is the populous united by a common Christian faith

in God by, as Arnold sees it, spread apart by new sciences and

conflicting opinions.

The comparison that he has been crafting between the drawing away,

and coming in of the sea is now made clear as his speaker says there is

no longer any return. The sea is only receding now, “melancholy,” and

“long.”

At the beginning of the fourth stanza it becomes clear that the

companion who is looking out over the water with the speaker is most

likely a lover or romantic partner.

He speaks now directly to her, and perhaps, to all those true believers

in God that are still out there. He asks that they remain true to one

another in this “land of dreams.” The world is no longer what it was, it

is more like a dream than the reality he is used to. It is a land that

appears to be full of various beautiful, new and joyous things but that is

not the case. This new world is in fact without “joy…love…[or] light…

certitude… [or] peace,” or finally, help for those in pain. It is not what it

appears to be.

He reflects that underneath this veneer of calm, there is something

more volatile and unsettling: ‘the grating roar / Of pebbles which the

waves draw back, and fling, / At their return, up the high strand’. This

sounds like a simple description of the waves tossing the pebbles about

the place on the shingly beach, but behind it there lurks the Victorians’

geological fascination with pebbles, shells, and other remnants of the

Earth’s distant past. Geology had been a hot talking point for the

Victorians ever since Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology appeared in

1830-33 (indeed, this was several years before Victoria came to the

throne in 1837). These pebbles may be more than window-dressing (as

it were) for Arnold’s poem, then: they may be an oblique reference to

the science of He reflects that underneath this veneer of calm, there is

something more volatile and unsettling: ‘the grating roar / Of pebbles

which the waves draw back, and fling, / At their return, up the high

strand’. This sounds like a simple description of the waves tossing the

pebbles about the place on the shingly beach, but behind it there lurks

the Victorians’ geological fascination with pebbles, shells, and other

remnants of the Earth’s distant past. Geology had been a hot talking

point for the Victorians ever since Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology

appeared in 1830-33 (indeed, this was several years before Victoria

came to the throne in 1837). These pebbles may be more than

window-dressing (as it were) for Arnold’s poem, then: they may be an

oblique reference to the science of geology that had done so much to

undermine many Victorians’ faith in the Biblical account of Creation

(see, for instance, John Ruskin’s comment about ‘those dreadful

hammers’).

So, the ‘Sea of Faith’ is retreating. What hope is there for humanity?

Arnold calls upon his newlywed wife to show solidarity and fidelity: if

we cannot have faith in religion, we can have faith in each other, in

human companionship and love. It’s possible that Arnold’s bleak vision

of a (potentially) godless world was influenced by Tennyson’s famous

depiction of a bleak world – of ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’ – in his

popular 1850 poem In Memoriam. Interestingly, Tennyson’s ‘dinosaur

cantos’ also seem to end by entreating human beings to find comfort in

each other, with his ‘behind the veil’ implying that marriage and love

will console us against our loss of faith in a divine plan for our future

and well-being.

He explores this contradiction through what is possibly the poem's most

famous stanza, that which compares his experience to that of Sophocles.

The comparison could be trite, if the point were merely that someone

long before had appreciated the same type of beauty that he does.

However, it is poignant because it reveals a darker potential in the

beautiful. What natural beauty reminds us of is human misery. Because

we can recognize the beauty in nature, but can never quite transcend

our limited natures to reach it, we might be drawn to lament as well as

celebrate it. The two responses are not mutually exclusive. This

contradictory feeling is explored in many of Arnold's poems - "The

Scholar-Gipsy" and "A Dream" are two examples - and he shows in

other poems an instinct towards the tragic, the human inability to

transcend our weakness (an example would be "Consolation," which

presents time as a tragic force). Thus, the allusion to Socrates, a Greek

playwright celebrated for his tragedies, is particularly apt.

Such a dual experience - between celebration of and lament for

humanity - is particularly possible for Arnold, since mankind has traded

faith for science following the publication of On the Origin of Species

and the rise of Darwinism. Ironically, the tumult of nature - out on the

ocean - is nothing compared to the tumult of this new way of life. It is

this latter tumult that frightens the speaker, that has him beg his lover

to stay true to him. He worries that the chaos of the modern world will

be too great, and that she will be shocked to discover that even in the

presence of great beauty like that outside their window, mankind is

gearing up for destruction. Behind even the appearance of faith is the

new order, and he hopes that they might use this moment to keep them

together despite such uncertainty.

The poem epitomizes a certain type of poetic experience, in which the

poet focuses on a single moment in order to discover profound depths.

Here, the moment is the visceral serenity the speaker feels in studying

the landscape, and the contradictory fear that that serenity then leads

him to feel. To accomplish that end, the poem uses a lot of imagery and

sensory information. It begins with mostly visual depictions, describing

the calm sea, the fair moon, and the lights in France across the

Channel. "The cliffs of England stand/Glimmering and vast" not only

describes the scene, but establishes how small the two humans detailed

in the poem are in the face of nature.

The poem concludes with a pessimistic outlook on the state of the

planet. As the people are suffering around the world on “a darkling

plain,” confused and fighting for things they don’t understand, real

suffering is going on and faith is slipping away.

‘Dover Beach’ is one of the best-known and best-loved of Victorian

poems, and the most widely anthologised poem by a Victorian figure

whose poetic output was considerably slimmer than that of many of his

contemporaries, such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson or Robert Browning.

Time has not been overly kind to Matthew Arnold either: the poems for

which he is remembered in the popular imagination tend to be confined

to ‘The Scholar-Gipsy’, ‘To Marguerite: Continued’, ‘Shakespeare’, and –

most of all – ‘Dover Beach’, which has been subjected to much critical

analysis already. Here is Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’, the poem which sums

up an era, along with a few words about its language and meaning.

otes, Stanza 1

moon . . . straits: The water reflects the image of the moon. A strait is

a narrow body of water that connects two larger bodies of water. In this

poem, straits refers to the Strait of Dover (French: Pas de Calais), which

connects the English Channel on the south to the North Sea on the

north. The distance between the port cities of Dover, England, and

Calais, France, is about twenty-one miles via the Strait of Dover.

light . . . gone: This clause establishes a sense of rhythm in that the

light blinks on and off. In addition, the clause foreshadows the message

of later lines--that the light of faith in God and religion, once strong,

now flickers. Whether an observer at Dover can actually see a light at

Calais depends on the height of the lighthouse and the altitude at which

the observer sees the light (because of the curvature of the earth), on

the brightness of the light, and on the weather conditions.

cliffs . . . vast: These are white cliffs, composed of chalk, a limestone

that easily erodes. Like the light from France, they glimmer, further

developing the theme of a weakening of the light of faith

moon-blanched: whitened by the light of the moon.

grating . . . .pebbles: Here, grating (meaning rasping, grinding, or

scraping) introduces conflict between the sea and the land and,

symbolically, between long-held religious beliefs and the challenges

against them. However, it may be an exaggeration that that pebbles

cause a grating roar.

Sophocles . . . Aegean: Arnold alludes here to a passage in the ancient

Greek play Antigone, by Sophocles, in which Sophocles says the gods

can visit ruin on people from one generation to the next, like a swelling

tide driven by winds.

it: "the eternal note of sadness" (line 14).

Aegean: The sea between Greece and Turkey. In the time of Sophocles,

the land occupied by Turkey was known as Anatolia.

turbid: muddy, cloudy

Find . . . thought: In the sound of the sea, the poet "hears" a thought

that disturbs him as did the one heard by Sophocles.

Sea . . . full: See theme, above, for an explanation.

girdle: sash, belt; anything that surrounds or encircles

I only hear: I alone hear

shingles: gravel on the beach

Interpretation

There was a time when faith in God was strong and comforting. This

faith wrapped itself around us, protecting us from doubt and despair, as

the sea wraps itself around the continents and islands of the world.

Now, however, the sea of faith has become a sea of doubt. Science

challenges the precepts of theology and religion; human misery makes

people feel abandoned, lonely. People place their faith in material

things.

neither . . . pain: The world has become a selfish, cynical, amoral,

materialistic battlefield; there is much hatred and pain, but there is no

guiding light.

darkling: dark, obscure, dim; occurring in darkness; menacing,

threatening, dangerous, ominous.

Where . . . night: E.K. Brown and J.O. Bailey suggest that this line is an

allusion to Greek historian Thucydides' account of the Battle of Epipolae

(413 BC), a walled fortress near the city of Syracuse on the island of

Sicily. In that battle, Athenians fought an army of Syracusans at night.

In the darkness, the combatants lashed out blindly at one another.

Brown and Bailey further observe that the line "suggests the confusion

of mid-Victorian values of all kinds . . . " (Brown, E.K, and J.O. Bailey,

eds. Victorian Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Ronald Press, 1962, page 831).

Interpretation

Let us at least be true to each other in our marriage, in our moral

standards, in the way we think; for the world will not be true to us.

Although it presents itself to us as a dreamland, it is a sham. It offers

nothing to ease our journey through life.

Figures of Speech

Arnold uses a variety of figures of speech, including the following

examples. (For definitions of the different figures of speech, see the

glossary of literary terms:

Alliteration Examples 1: to-night , tide; full, fair (Lines 1-2); gleams,

gone; coast, cliff; long line; which the waves; folds, furled

Assonance: tide, lies;

Paradox and Hyperbole: grating roar of pebbles

Metaphor: which the waves draw back, and fling (comparison of the

waves to an intelligent entity that rejects that which it has captured)

Metaphor: turbid ebb and flow of human misery (comparison of human

misery to the ebb and flow of the sea)

Metaphor: TheSea of Faith (comparison of faith to water making up an

ocean)

Simile: The Sea of Faith . . . lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled

(use of like to compare the sea to a girdle)

Metaphor: breath of the night-wind (comparison of the wind to a living

thing)

Simile: the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams

(use of like to compare the world to a land of dreams)

Anaphora: So various, so beautiful, so new (repetition of so)

Anaphora: nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for

pain (repetition of nor)

Dover Beach is a poem that offers the reader different perspectives on

life, love and landscape. Arnold chose to use first, second and third

person point of view in order to fully engage with the reader. This adds

a little uncertainty. Note the changes in lines 6, 9, 18, 24, 29, 35.

There is varied line length, 37 in total, split into 4 stanzas, the first of

which is a mixed up sonnet with a rhyme scheme abacebecdfcgfg, a sure

signal of a break with convention.

The second stanza of 6 lines also has end rhymes, as does the third

stanza, and the fourth stanza of 9 lines concludes with a repeat of the

initial end rhymes.

Rhyming always brings with it a clear relationship between pattern and

harmony, between voice and ear. The more frequent the rhyme of

regular lines the more confident the reader becomes and arguably, the

less complex the poem.

When that rhyme is varied, as in Dover Beach, more interest is

generated for the reader and listener. Line length, enjambment and

internal rhyme also help to add spice.

Enjambment is very important in this poem as it reinforces the

action of the tidal sea, coming in, relaxing, then moving out again. As in

lines 9-14 for example. Enjambment works together with other

punctuation to maintain this pattern throughout Dover Beach.

The third stanza, with figurative language, contains a fascinating word

mix, the letters f, d and l being prominent, whilst assonance plays it

role:

once/too/round/shore

like/bright/girdle

melancholy/long/roar

Two examples of simile can be found in lines 23 and 31.

Anaphora, repeated words, are used in lines 32 and 34.

Combinations such as bright girdle furled and naked shingles of the

world add to the liquid feel of the scene.

Alliteration can be found in the last stanza:

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

And the final two lines are packed with an irresistible spread of vowels:

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Arnold sees life ahead as a continual battle against the darkness and,

with the decay of Christianity and the demise of faith, only the beacon

of interpersonal love can light the way.

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