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Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings...©
2005
Time
and Place
Matthew
Arnold (1822-1888) wrote "Dover Beach" during or
shortly after a visit
he and his wife made to the Dover region of
southeastern England, the setting
of the poem, in 1851. They had married in June of
that year. A draft of
the first two stanzas of the poem appears on a
sheet of paper he used to
write notes for another another work, "Empedocles
on Etna," published in
1852. The town of Dover is closer to France than
any other port city in
England. The body of water separating the
coastline of the town from the
coast of France is the Strait of Dover, north of
the English Channel and
south of the North Sea.
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.
Who
Is the Listener? (Line 29)
The
person addressed in the poem—lines 6, 9, and
29—is Matthew
Arnold's wife, Frances Lucy
Wightman. However, since the poem expresses a
universal message, one may
say that she can be any woman listening to the
observations of any man.
Arnold and his wife visited Dover Beach twice in
1851, the year they were
married and the year Arnold was believed to have
written "Dover Beach."
At that time Arnold was inspector of schools in
England, a position he
held until 1886.
Theme
Arnold’s
central message
is this: Challenges to the validity of
long-standing theological and
moral precepts have shaken the faith of people in
God and religion.
In Arnold’s world of the mid-1800's, the pillar of
faith supporting society
was perceived as crumbling under the weight of
scientific postulates, such
as the evolutionary theory of English physician
Erasmus Darwin and French
naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Consequently, the
existence of God and
the whole Christian scheme of things was cast in
doubt. Arnold, who was
deeply religious, lamented the dying of the light of
faith, as symbolized
by the light he sees in “Dover Beach” on the coast
of France, which gleams
one moment and is gone the next. He remained a
believer in God and religion,
although he was open to—and advocated—an overhaul of
traditional religious
thinking. In God and the Bible, he wrote:
"At the present
moment two things about the Christian religion must
surely be clear to
anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men
cannot do without it; the
other, that they cannot do with it as it is."
Type
of Work
“Dover
Beach” is a poem with the mournful tone of an elegy
and the personal intensity of a dramatic
monologue. Because the meter and rhyme vary
from line to line, the
poem is said to be in free verse--that is, it is
unencumbered by the strictures
of traditional versification. However, there is
cadence in the poem, achieved
through the following:
Alliteration
Examples: to-night,
tide;
full,
fair;
gleams,
gone;
coast,
cliff
(first stanza)
Parallel
Structure Example: The tide is full, the
moon lies fair (first stanza); So various, so beautiful,
so new (fourth
stanza); Hath really
neither joy, nor love, nor light / Nor
certitude, nor peace,
nor help for pain (fourth stanza)
Rhyming
Words Examples: to-night,
light; fair, night-air; stand,
land; bay, spray; fling, bring; begin, in (first stanza)
Words
Suggesting Rhythm
Examples: draw back, return; Begin, and cease, then
begin again (first
stanza); turbid ebb
and flow (second stanza)
Year
of Publication
Although
Matthew Arnold completed
"Dover Beach" in 1851 or 1852, the poem was not
published until 1867. It
appeared in a collection entitled New Poems,
published in London.
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Dover
Beach
By Matthew Arnold
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......................................14
Notes, 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. The fact that they easily
erode supports this theme.
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.
strand:
shoreline
2
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............................20
Notes, Stanza 1
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.
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..........................;........28
Notes, Stanza 3
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.
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......................37
Notes, Stanza 4
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 thnk;
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.
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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)
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