-
Time and Place
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) wrote
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,
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
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:
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:
t
o-nigh
t
,
t
ide;
f
ull,
f
air;
g
leams,
g
one;
c
oast,
c
liff (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)
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 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.
.......
....................
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
:
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
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
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
confusion of mid-Victorian
values of all kinds . . .
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.
.
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:
t
o-nigh
t
,
t
ide;
f
ull,
f
air (Lines 1-2);
g
leams,
g
one;
c
oast,
c
liff;
l
ong
l
ine;
w
hich the
w
aves;
f
olds,
f
urled
Assonance: t
ide
,
l
ies
;
Paradox and Hyperbole:
grating roar of pebbles