“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold

· About the poet

Matthew Arnold (Dec. 24, 1822 – April 15, 1888) was an English poet and cultural
critic, whose works remains amongst the best known of the 19th century British
poetry. He is best known for his themes on nature, modern society, and moral
instruction. Though he had written numerous poems, yet he is best known for his
critical essays. His best known works are Culture and Anarchy, Essays in Criticism,
Dover Beach, The Scholar Gypsy and Thyrsis.

***( This is only for your reference and understanding but you are not to write
it in your exams.)

· Critical Summary:

“Dover Beach,”is a dramatic monologue of thirty-seven lines, divided into four

unequal sections of fourteen, six, eight, and nine lines, written in 1851, shortly after
he and his wife made a visit to the Dover region of Southern Eastern England, which
is the poem’s setting. The poem’s title, “Beach” is more significant than “Dover,” for
it points at the controlling image of the poem. In “Dover Beach,”Matthew Arnold
uses many symbols to express his feeling toward the situation at the Victorian period.
He uses symbols to contradict the world of industrialisation and the world of religion.
Arnold’s central message in the poem is the challenges to the validity of long standing
theological and moral precepts that have shaken the faith of people in God and
religion.The pillar of faith supporting society was perceived as crumbling under the
weight of scientific postulates and consequently the existence of God and the whole
Christian scheme was cast in doubt. Arnold lamented the dying of the light of faith as
symbolised by the light he sees in Dover Beach, which gleams one moment and is
gone the next.He also refers to Sophocles’ work to make the contradictions show
more clearly in the poem.

The poem begins with a simple statement: “The sea is calm tonight.” The statement
bodes of the significance the sea is going to play as an image in the poem. The first
stanza seems to reflect on the sea’s calmness. There is no emotion or thought, but
only quiet images. But the line: “on the French coast the light/ Gleams and is gone,”
indicates something has changed to the timeless sea that is on the French coast.
Lonely imagery is build where “the cliff of England stand, / Glimmering and vast, out
in the tranquil bay.” However, there is one element out of tune with the peaceful
scene, and the poet strongly urges his love to “Listen!” to the rasping sound from the
shingle beach as the waves, flowing in and out, drag the loose pebbles back and forth;
the waves are moving in a cycle unending. This imagery appears almost throughout
the poem. The last two lines of the stanza start to add the feeling more pointedly, now
that the mood has been set: the waves have a “tremulous cadence slow, and bring/ The
eternal note of sadness in.” The monotonous rhythm of the waves makes the poet
depressed.The poem has the mournful tone of an elegy and the personal intensity of a
dramatic monologue.

In the second stanza, the sound imagery continues, even as the poem reaches out
through history—“Sophocles long ago/ Heard it(the eternal note of sadness) on the
Aegean” sea and it brought to his mind “Of human misery.” This line illustrate that
the people, for a long time contemplated about an evaluation between sea and human
misery. Here, we have a comparison between the ebb and flow of human misery and
the sea. The speaker can sense a thought coming from the sound of the waves in the
distant northern sea.

In the third stanza, the speaker makes a contrast between the tide of the sea and his
own personal faith using imagery. The tide of the sea symbolises the unsympathetic
world. He notes that, not only is human misery like the sea, but also is “The Sea of
Faith” of the people. It refers to the faith and appreciation that people put in nature
and themselves which was “once, too, at the full” because people had a lot of faith and
devotion in themselves, in nature, and in religion. But now, it doesn’t exist anymore
and that belief is gradually passing away like “the folds of a bright girdle” and men’s
minds are like pebbles on the shore. The passing of faith causes the minds to be
isolated in the border between belief and disbelief. When the speaker hears the grating
roar of pebbles of the sea, he is reminded of the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”
of faith as it retreats from men’s minds. The tide is going out, leaving the “naked
shingles of the world,” which literally means the loose pebbles that collect on
beaches, but it also brings to mind a bleak world stripped of its faith.
The last stanza goes back to the beginning, to those beautiful calm images, and the
poet hastily says to his beloved, “Ah, love, let us be true/ To one another!” Through
these lines, he exemplifies his profound love for her and requests her to be faithful to
him because “the world, which seems/ To lie before us like a land of dreams,/ So
various, so beautiful, so new,” isn’t any of that. The world really hath “neither joy,
nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.” These lines indicate
the speaker’s loss of faith and his growing pessimism. The world seems to be
strangely unreal, without anything real to cling to or grasp. It has variety, beauty and
freshness but, it is all blind negation. There is neither love nor joy nor light nor peace;
it’s a world of uncertainty. The poet and the beloved, perched at the window, are like
the light that gleams and is gone from the edge of the land that is, the French coast.
The poem ends with its strongest lonely image of “a darkling plain/ Swept with
confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Through this image, the speaker compares men struggling in the world with armies
struggling on a plain at night. There is a sound of confused alarms and struggles, but
the soldiers are ignorant as to what they are fighting for and why? All the mortals live
in this world in a dark state of mind and the struggle for survival is no less different
from ignorant armies that fight throughout the night. The poet and the beloved’s
lonely state—which they are trying to fend off with their mutual love—extends to all
of humanity, as suggested in this final dark picture.

The poem describes the poet’s battle with love, life and faith in his religion. He
narrates a story through this poem, trying to talk to his wife about their relationship
and what he thinks love should be, using the ‘sea’ and the ‘waves’ to support his
depiction. Arnold heats the sound of the sea as , “ the central note of sadness.”
Sophocles. a Greek play writer also heard the same sound as he stood on the shore of
the Aegean Sea.He attempts to transform this note of sadness into , “ A higher order
of sadness into , “ a higher order of experience.”Arnold in the action of the tide senses
the retreat, a metaphor for the loss of faith in the modern age expressed in the auditory
image , “But now I only hear its melancholy, long with withdrawing roar.” Arnold
decries the plight of the modern world where faith in God is replaced by faith in
material things.And the sea of faith has become a sea of doubt.To Arnold, the only
option left on this “ darkling plain”,confused with alarms of “struggle and plight,” is
love one another as he calls out hi beloved, “ Ah love, let us be true to one
 another ,”as the world is unfaithful . In the poem, the poet tries to point out that
spirituality and faith should remain in humanity because paying no heed to it would
result in the ambiguity and vulnerability of modern man.

· Sample Questions

1. Describe the loss of religious faith in “Dover Beach.”

2. How is Arnold’s ,“Dover Beach” a dramatic monologue? Explain.
3. What are the literary devices used in “Dover Beach”?
4. Elaborate on the theme of the poem, “Dover Beach.”
5. Is “Dover Beach” a nature poem? Discuss.
6. Explain the lines: “And we are here as on a darkling plain/ Swept with confused
alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
7. Give a critical appreciation of the poem, “Dover Beach.”
8. What is the “eternal note of sadness” in the poem?
9. What does Arnold mean by the line about the world: “Hath really neither joy, nor
love, nor light”?
10. What does “Sea of Faith” symbolise in the poem?