Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold
"Dover Beach" is a short lyric poem by the English poet Matthew Arnold.[1] It was first published in 1867 in the collection New Poems, but surviving notes indicate its composition may have begun as early as 1849. The most likely date is 1851.[2]
The title, locale and subject of the poem's descriptive opening lines is the shore of the English ferry port of Dover, Kent, facing Calais, France, at the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part (21 miles) of the English Channel, where Arnold honeymooned in 1851.
The poem
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-blanched 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 A gaean, 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.
Matthew Arnold(1822-1888)was an English poet and critic who worked as an inspector of schools.He wrote about social, religious and educational issues of his day. He has been characterized as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.
Arnold's Dover Beach and all his other works had became the poetic forefeather of Modern Sensibility.Arnold's Dover Beach 1867 has the philosophy of Romanticism and its evolution into cyrical Modernism of Industrial Revolution. It holds a great deal of personal meaning to any secular that might feel that the creativity of most poets excludes them from their readership.
Background about the poem,
Arnold and his wife visited Dover Beach twice in 1851,the year they married and the year Arnold was believed to had written Dover Beach. Arnold's central message was that the modern wold had shaken the faith of people in God and religion and that the whole christain believe was cast in doubt.He laments the dying of the light of faith, as symbolized by the light he sees in Dover Beach
Stanza 1:
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-blanched 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
The first stanza opens with the description of a nightly scene at the sea side, he came to the window to share the visual beauty of the scene.Here he mentions the world before the war, but now everything is destroyed and religion become weak and this shows Arnold's sad vision on the present life. Then he describes the motion of the sea. The wavest hit the rocks and this make a spray so he doesn't see the sea.he only seea the long lines of spray.When the sea hits the land, the waves draw back the small pebbles. It makes a very deep lou sound like the roar of the lon.the sound of these pebbles began and stop and then began again.This sound cause the emotion of sadness to the poet. The poet finds that the world in which he lives, has no love no peace, no light or joy.This STANZA expresses the human misery which exists as a result to the human faults.It also shows Arnold's ability to predict events.
Figures of Speech:
- The poet uses(tonight-moon-air)to show it is night.
He uses adj like (fair-tranguil-calm)to create a harmonious mood.
He uses(come - listen) to involves his reader.
Here the word (only)can be seen as a caesura.
Verbs like (cease -again -begin) show that the pebbles' motion are a never ending movement.
Stanza 2:
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, 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 second stanza introduces the Greek author"Sophocles" hearing the same sound in the meditterronean when inspired to write his tragedies such as "Antigone, King Odepius and Electra. Then he reconnects this idea to the present.he uses "Sophocles" to refer to the past and to hold a comparison between the past and the present.Although there is a distance in time and pace, the general feelings prevails.He finds in hearing the sea sound, the retreat of religion and faith.
So he mentions Sophocles to give the reader a sort of sadness which Europe suffered and to say that Sophocles also knows about our misery. the expression" northen sea" is a connecting element between two stanzas. A recent critic connects the two (Arnold and Sophocles) as artists, Arnold the lyric poet and Sophocles the tragedian. each attempting to transform this note of sadness.
Stanza 3:
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.
The third stanza reflects the poet's sadness in the sound of the sea. He mentions religion and scepticism as a sort of threat. Here he compares the sea to religion as the sea is vast and deep just as religion which is extending. So the sea is turned into the sea of faith, which is a metaphor for a time when religion could still be experinenced without the doubt that the modern age brought about through Darwinism, The Industrial Revolution, Imperalis and this cause a crisis in religion. When religion was still intact or strong, the world was dressed "like folds of a bright gridle furled". So this sea of faith surronds the world, but now this faith is gone because religion is decline as it has been attacked by doubt and scepticism.As a result, the world lies there stripped, naked and bleak. So without faith, the whole world seems to have a skin disease. The first 3 lines creat feeling of hope but the last lines sound sad and hopeless."But now" is a caesura
Stanza 4:
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.
The fourth and final stanza begins with a dramatic pledge by the lyrical self and with an appeal to love. He doesn't mean love between man and women but between conutries. In this stanza he speakes about the first time of faith and how it was strong and powerful. then he turns to his beloved asking her to be "true", meaning faithful to him and not to be changeable like the world. Then he move to compare the world to"a land of dreams" which is 'various, beautiful and new". He doesn't see Europe as the land of dreams after losing faith, love and peace between countries
Ib these emotionally lines Arnold says that the beautiful world, world of romantic is a lie. There is only the modern world which is devoid of answered hopes or prayers.
Figures of Speech:
The poem is writen in the blank verse, irregular rhymes (Iambic pentametre)
Anaphora like in (gleams - glimmering) line 4, 5
Personification (sea meets) line 8
Metaphor: Sea of faith Line12 to show that humanity was more religious"
bright gridle furled line 23 emphasizes that faith inseparable to earth.
The waves draw back : Compares waves to intelligent person
land of dreams: Compares world to land of dreams"
Breath of night : compares night to person who breathes.
Paradox: roar of pebbles
Simile: the last line in the last stanza(Where ignorant armies clash by night) allusion to a passage in Thucy dids.
Summary
.
This is a poem about a sea and a beach that is truly beautiful, but holds much deeper meaning than what meets the eye. The poem is written in free verse with no particular meter or rhyme scheme, although some of the words do rhyme. Arnold is the speaker speaking to someone he loves. As the poem a progress, the reader sees why Arnold poses the question stated above, and why life seems to be the way it is. During the first part of the poem Arnold states, “The Sea is calm tonight” and in line 7, “Only, from the long line of spray”. In this way, Arnold is setting the mood or scene so the reader can understand the point he is trying to portray. In lines 1-6 he is talking about a very peaceful night on the ever so calm sea, with the moonlight shining so intensely on the land. Then he states how the moonlight “gleams and is gone” because the “cliffs of England” are standing at their highest peaks, which are blocking the light of the moon. Next, the waves come roaring into the picture, as they “draw back and fling the pebbles” onto the shore and back out to sea again. Arnold also mentions that the shore brings “the eternal note of sadness in”, maybe representing the cycles of life and repetition. Arnold then starts describing the history of Sophocle’s idea of the “Aegean’s turbid ebb and flow”.
The sea is starting to become rougher and all agitated. Also the mention of “human misery” implies that life begins and ends, but it can still be full of happiness, and unfortunately, at the same time, sadness. “The Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore.” The key word in that stanza is once, because it implies that he (Arnold) used to look at the sea in a different way than he does now. Throughout the whole poem, Arnold uses a metaphor to describe his views and opinions. Now he only hears its “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” It seems as though Arnold is questioning his own faith. The whole poem is based on a metaphor – Sea to Faith. When the sea retreats, so does faith, and leaves us with nothing. In the last nine lines, Arnold wants his love and himself to be true to one another. The land, which he thought was so beautiful and new, is actually nothing – “neither joy, nor love, nor light”. In reality, Arnold is expressing that nothing is certain, because where there is light there is dark and where there is happiness there is sadness. “We are here though as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash at night”. Arnold uses much alliteration in the poem. For example, in line 31, “To lie before us like a land of dreams”, repeating the letter L at the beginning of three words. Also, in line 4, “Gleams and is gone…”, repeating the letter G. The usage of assonance and consonance is not widespread in “Dover Beach”. In line 3 – “…on the French coast the light” – the repetition of the letter T is shown, as an example of consonance. Other literary techniques, such as onomatopoeia and hyperbole, are not used in the poem, besides the metaphor for “Faith” being the Sea.
The diction Arnold uses creates a sense of peacefulness and calmness. It is fairly easily understood vocabulary, with the exception of a few words, such as cadence and darkling. From reading Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”, one realizes that there is no certainty in life. When everything is going perfectly, something unfortunate may happen at any given time, with no forewarning.
Analysis
In Stefan Collini's opinion, "Dover Beach" is a difficult poem to analyze, and some of its passages and metaphors have become so well known that they are hard to see with "fresh eyes".[3] Arnold begins with a naturalistic and detailed nightscape of the beach at Dover in which auditory imagery plays a significant role ("Listen! you hear the grating roar").[4] The beach, however, is bare, with only a hint of humanity in a light that "gleams and is gone".[5] Reflecting the traditional notion that the poem was written during Arnold's honeymoon (see composition section), one critic notes that "the speaker might be talking to his bride".[6]
The sea is calm to-night.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; —on the French coast the lightGleams 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 sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf 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 bringThe eternal note of sadness in.Arnold looks at two aspects of this scene, its soundscape (in the first and second stanzas) and the retreating action of the tide (in the third stanza). He hears the sound of the sea as "the eternal note of sadness". Sophocles, a 5th century BC Greek playwright who wrote tragedies on fate and the will of the gods, also heard this sound as he stood upon the shore of the Aegean Sea.[7][8] Critics differ widely on how to interpret this image of the Greek classical age. One sees a difference between Sophocles interpreting the "note of sadness" humanistically, while Arnold in the industrial nineteenth century hears in this sound the retreat of religion and faith.[9] A more recent critic connects the two as artists, Sophocles the tragedian, Arnold the lyric poet, each attempting to transform this note of sadness into "a higher order of experience".[10]
Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Ægæan, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea.[11][12]Having examined the soundscape, Arnold turns to the action of the tide itself and sees in its retreat a metaphor for the loss of faith in the modern age,[13] once again expressed in an auditory image ("But now I only hear / Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar"). This third stanza begins with an image not of sadness, but of "joyous fulness" similar in beauty to the image with which the poem opens.[14]
The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drear[15]And naked shingles of the world.The final stanza begins with an appeal to love, then moves on to the famous ending metaphor. Critics have varied in their interpretation of the first two lines; one calls them a "perfunctory gesture ... swallowed up by the poem's powerfully dark picture",[16] while another sees in them "a stand against a world of broken faith".[17] Midway between these is one of Arnold's biographers, who describes being "true / To one another" as "a precarious notion" in a world that has become "a maze of confusion".[18]
The metaphor with which the poem ends is most likely an allusion to a passage in Thucydides's account of the Peloponnesian War. He describes an ancient battle that occurred on a similar beach during the Athenian invasion of Sicily. The battle took place at night; the attacking army became disoriented while fighting in the darkness and many of their soldiers inadvertently killed each other.[19] This final image has also been variously interpreted by the critics. Culler calls the "darkling plain" Arnold's "central statement" of the human condition.[20] Pratt sees the final line as "only metaphor" and thus susceptible to the "uncertainty" of poetic language.[21]
Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo 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 plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.[22][23]"The poem's discourse", Honan tells us, "shifts literally and symbolically from the present, to Sophocles on the Aegean, from Medieval Europe back to the present—and the auditory and visual images are dramatic and mimetic and didactic. Exploring the dark terror that lies beneath his happiness in love, the speaker resolves to love—and exigencies of history and the nexus between lovers are the poem's real issues. That lovers may be 'true / To one another' is a precarious notion: love in the modern city momentarily gives peace, but nothing else in a post-medieval society reflects or confirms the faithfulness of lovers. Devoid of love and light the world is a maze of confusion left by 'retreating' faith."[24]
Critics have questioned the unity of the poem, noting that the sea of the opening stanza does not appear in the final stanza, while the "darkling plain" of the final line is not apparent in the opening.[25] Various solutions to this problem have been proffered. One critic saw the "darkling plain" with which the poem ends as comparable to the "naked shingles of the world".[26] "Shingles" here means flat beach cobbles, characteristic of some wave-swept coasts. Another found the poem "emotionally convincing" even if its logic may be questionable.[27] The same critic notes that "the poem upends our expectations of metaphor" and sees in this the central power of the poem.[28] The poem's historicism creates another complicating dynamic. Beginning in the present it shifts to the classical age of Greece, then (with its concerns for the sea of faith) it turns to Medieval Europe, before finally returning to the present.[24] The form of the poem itself has drawn considerable comment. Critics have noted the careful diction in the opening description,[29] the overall, spell-binding rhythm and cadence of the poem[30] and its dramatic character.[31] One commentator sees the strophe-antistrophe of the ode at work in the poem, with an ending that contains something of the "cata-strophe" of tragedy.[32] Finally, one critic sees the complexity of the poem's structure resulting in "the first major 'free-verse' poem in the language".[33]
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