Dover Beach" is a lyric poem by the English poet Matthew Arnold.
It was first published in 1867 in
the collection New Poems; however, surviving notes indicate its composition may have begun as
early as 1849. The most likely date is 1851.
Dover Beach
BY MAT T HE W AR NOL D
The sea is calm tonight.
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-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves drawback, 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 Glean, 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 furled.
But now I 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 light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, 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 Summary
This article deals with the poem Dover Beach Summary and analysis.
The poet is Matthew Arnold. It represents the clash between science and
religion. This poem opens on a beautiful naturalistic scene. The poet
(speaker) stands on the cliffs of Dover Beach. He is gazing out at the
majesty of the beauty of nature. Sadness is creeping in, and the poet is
reminding about how the recent scientific discoveries have forever
changed the human values with the relation to nature. In this way, he
brings science and faith in conflict. The poem presents all the theology
and scientific theory with the message that all such things in the world
can’t make life meaningful if there is no love.
Dover Beach Summary in short
This article explains the Dover Beach Summary by Matthew Arnold. It
presents the Dover Beach Summary in a brief way. The timeline of the
Dover Beach Summary is of England during the early 19th century.
One night, the speaker sits with a woman inside the house and he is
looking out over the English Channel near the town of Dover. Both see
the lights on the coast of France, which is almost twenty miles away.
Sea is quiet and calm.
When the light over on the side of France, the speaker focuses on the
English side, which still remains tranquil. He is making a trade-off
between visual imagery and aural imagery. He describes the “grating
roar” of the pebbles which was pulled out by the waves and calls the
music of the world as an eternal note of sadness.
Further, the speaker flashes back to ancient Greece, where Sophocles
heard this type of sound on the Aegean Sea. Then he introduces the
poem’s main metaphor and suggests that faith is fading from the society
as the tide is from the shore. The speaker expresses this downfall of the
faith through melancholy diction.
In the last stanza, the speaker directly addresses his beloved, who is
sitting next to him. He is saying to her that they always be true to one
another and to the world that is laid out before them. However, the
speaker straight forward warns that the world’s beauty is only an
illusion. This is due to the fact that a battlefield full of people fighting in
the absolute darkness.
Analysis of the poem
Through this poem “Dover Beach”, speaker manages to comment on
his most recurring themes. Its message is that the world’s mystery has
declined with the rise in modernity. But, this decline is painted as
particularly uncertain, dark, and volatile.
The poem is particularly powerful due to its romantic streak having
almost no tinge of the religious. Even he speaks about the Sea of Faith
without linking it to any deity or heaven. This word “faith” has a
definite humanist tinge here.
It is no accident that the sight which is inspiring is the untouched nature,
and this is almost completely absent from any human involvement.
Here, what the poet is expressing, is an innate quality, a natural drive
towards beauty.
He explores the contradiction through the poem’s most famous stanza.
This stanza compares his experience to that of Sophocles. It reveals the
darker potential covered under the beautiful illusion. Actually natural
beauty is reminding us about human misery. This is because we can
find this beauty, but we can never quite transcend our limited natures to
reach it. These two responses are not mutually exclusive.
This type of dual experience between the celebration and lament for
humanity is often possible for Arnold. Ironically, the tumult of nature is
nothing compared to the tumult of this era of life. It frightens the
speaker, to beg to his lover to stay true to him. He worries that this
chaos of the modern world will change her too.
The poem epitomizes some kind of poetic experience, through which
the poet focuses on a single moment in order to discover the profound
depths. To accomplish the end, the poem uses many imagery and
sensory information in his poem. It begins with the visual depictions
like a calm sea, fair moon, and the lights in France across the Channel.
The first stanza is switching from visual to auditory descriptions like the
grating roar and tremulous cadence slow.
This poem is intelligently and sensibly employing many enjambments
which is a popular poetic technique. It is also very clear that Arnold
does not wish to create a pretty picture meant for the reflection. On the
other way, the beautiful sights are used significantly due to the fear and
anxiety which inspires the speaker. Thus the poem so wonderfully
straddles the line between the poetic reflection and uncertainty.
Therefore this poem has remained a well-loved piece throughout the
centuries.
