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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
(Stanza 1)
Parallel
Structure Example: The tide is full, the moon lies fair (Stanza
1); So various, so beautiful, so new (Stanza 4); Hath really
neither joy, nor love, nor light / Nor certitude, nor peace,
nor help for pain (Stanza 4)
Rhyming
Words Examples: to-night, light; fair, night-air; stand,
land; bay, spray; fling, bring; begin, in (Stanza
1)
Words Suggesting Rhythm
Examples: draw back, return; Begin, and cease, then begin again (Stanza
1); turbid ebb and flow (Stanza 2)
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
| Text
of the Poem |
Notes and Comments |
| 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. |
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 21 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. |
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. |
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. |
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 B.C.), 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: The
Sea 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)
Anapora: nor love,
nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (repetition of
nor)
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