Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

Dover Beach

    The sea is calm tonight.
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 Agean, 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. 

About Author

    Matthew Arnold is one of the greatest literary figures of the Victorian Age. He is placed as a poet next to Tennyson and Browning. Arnold was born on the Christmas Eve in the year 1822. In 1841 he won a scholarship to join the Balliol College, Oxford. In 1844 he completed his B.A. in literature. Arnold published his first volume of poems “The Strayed Reveller” and Other Poems in 1849. It included his famous sonnet ‘Shakespeare’ and ‘To a Gypsy Child’. His famous poems are ‘The Scholar Gypsy’, ‘Shohrab and Rustom’ and his elegiac poem ‘Rugby Chapel’. In 1857, Arnold was appointed as professor of poetry in Oxford. In 1888 he died.

    Introduction of the poem

Dover Beach is regarded as a beautiful love lyric, philosophical and Nature poem by Matthew Arnold. It is deeply a personal poem of love as it expresses the poet’s advice to his beloved that they should true to each other in love relationship. A faithful love relationship can compensate the loss of faith in this world. Dover Beach is short poem of 37 lines divided into four stanzas of unequal length, the first stanza containing 14 lines, the second 6, the third 8, and fourth 9. It was published in his last volume of poems under the title ‘New Poems’ in 1867.

Summary

The poem opens with the description of natural scene from the beach at Dover. The sea is calm and the tide is full in the moonlit night. The daylight has reduced and the moon shining in the sky is reflected in the English Channel near Dover. On the opposite side of the channel, daylight illuminates the French coast for a while, and then disappears leaving it engulfed in darkness. The huge steepy faces of the rocks are shining faintly in the moonlight. The air in this calm night is sweet. The poet calls his beloved to enjoy the serene atmosphere. But the peaceful atmosphere is being disturbed by the sound made by the pebbles as they are tossing up and down by the waves. A sad note is brought by the waves of the sea as they are disturbing its calm. After describing the present scene writer goes back to ancient time and refers to great Greek poet and playwright Sophocles, hearing the sound of the Aegean Sea. The poet compares the ebb and flow of the sea with the misery and suffering in human life and returns to the present.

    The poet believes the sea of faith was full and surrounded the shores of the earth like a shinning girdle. This implies that people in the past had a deep faith in religious values. But in poet’s time, i.e., in The Victorian age, this sea has retreated leaving the pebbles lying on the dry shore. The religious faith has declined, leaving the lives of men dry and dreary. The loss of higher values has entailed misery doubts despair and a dull materialistic life. Doubts and despair, like the night wind, have disturbed the tranquil and harmonious life of Man which was formerly fortified against such evils by religious faith and higher spiritual values. 

As the world has lost the religious faith so the poet tries to present an alternative to this faith in the form of a faithful love relationship. He suggests to his beloved that they should remain faithful and true to one another in this faithless world. He remarks that the joyful appearance of the world lying before them is deceptive. Outwardly it looks beautiful but in reality there is no joy, love, security and peace. It is a dark world suffering from internal divisions and strife. People are groping, struggling and fighting in the dark, without being aware of the cause or the purpose of their conflicts.  The poet presents the purposeless and futile conflicts in the society. It is divided among various creeds and classes. The poem ends on a note of sadness and despair.