Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

 Dover Beach

                                               Mathew Arnold (1822- 1888)

Mathew Arnold is a Victorian poet and great critic of that time.

Central idea:  The poem "Dover Beach" deplores the ebb of faith in a world that is changing rapidly with the growth of science and technology, and suggests a way of saving oneself from the loss of faith. It presents a grim picture of society and the world where ignorant armies clash by night.

Summary

The speaker is observing the sea' "the sea is calm today''.He sees the tide and reflection of the moon on the sea. He finds the light on the French coast a bit dim but the English coast is standing tall and bright. The bay looks tranquil. So he addresses someone to come to the window to observe the beauty and calmness of the nighttime. He also requests to listen to the granting roar of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling. He compares the sound of pebbles with the eternal sadness of a human being. ''the eternal note of sadness in''.

In the second stanza, the poet takes the name of the ancient playwright Sophocles who heard sadness and understood human misery. He finds deploring state of human faith day by day among the people.

           According to the poet, once religious faith was full (the sea of faith). The world was covered with faith like the folds of a bright girdle furled (like a belt that encircles around the human waist). But the speaker is listening to its melancholy. The faith is decreasing day by day with rapid change in science and technology.

The speaker urges people to be true and show love to each other. He expects that people should behave with love, honesty, and simplicity. The world is so various, so beautiful, so fresh and new. But there is no joy, no love, no peace, and no certitude in this vast world. People are in the land of dreams. They are struggling like ignorant armies fighting at night.

 

symbols

The sea is calm today: sea symbolizes, unstable human thoughts, sadness and despair, etc.

 The sea of faith: sea symbolizes the vastness

Tide: the rise of dishonesty among the people

metaphor: The tide is full,

                       The sea of faith,

Simile: once faith lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled

love, to lie before us like the land of dream

Q.N.1.How does the poet represent the loss of faith in the modern changing times?

Q.N.2.What is the importance of being true to each other in a faithless world?

Q.N.3. Dover Beach is a lament for humanity in the face of modernity and progress. Discuss.

Q.N.4. Summarize the main idea of the poem Dover Beach. 

Analysis of 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. 

 

Arnold begins ‘Dover Beach’ by giving a description of the setting in which it is taking place. It is clear from the title, although never explicitly stated in the poem, that the beach in question is Dover, on the coast of England. The sea is said to be calm, there is a beach on the water at full tide. The moon “lies fair,” lovely, “upon the straits” (a strait is a narrow passage of water such as the English Channel onto which Dover Beach abuts).

 Although useful to imagine the speaker in a particular place, the setting is not as important as what it represents. 

The speaker is able to see across the Channel to the French side of the water. The lights on the far coast are visibly gleaming, and then they disappear and the “cliffs of England” are standing by themselves “vast” and “glimmering” in the bay. The light that shines then vanishes representing to this speaker, and to Arnold himself, the vanishing faith of the English people. 

No one around him seems to see the enormity of what it happening, the night is quiet. There is a calm the speaker refers to as “tranquil.” But as the reader will come to see, many things may seem one way but actually exist as the opposite. 

Now the speaker turns to another person that is in the scene with him, and asks that this unnamed person comes to the window and breathe in the “sweet…night-air!” 

The second half of this stanza is spent on describing the sounds of the water that the speaker is viewing. The speaker draws his companion’s attention to the sound that the water makes as it rushes in over the pebbles on the shore. They roll over one another creating, “the grating roar.” This happens over and over again as the sea recedes and returns. The slow cadence of this movement, and its eternal repetitions, seem sad to the narrator. As if the returning sea is bringing with it, “The eternal note of sadness in.”

Second Stanza

Sophocles long ago 

Heard it on the Ægean, 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 second stanza is much shorter and relates the world in which the two characters are into the larger picture of history. The speaker states that “long ago” Sophocles also heard this sound on the Ægean sea as the tides came in. It too brought to his mind the feelings of “human misery” and how these emotions “ebb and flow.” Sophocles, who penned the play Antigone, is one of the best known dramatic writers of Ancient Greece. 

Arnold is hoping to bring to the reader’s attention the universal experience of misery, that all throughout time have lived with. This short stanza ends with a return to the present as the narrator states that “we” too are finding these same emotions in the sound. 

Third Stanza

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.

     In the third stanza of ‘Dover Beach’, it becomes clear that Arnold is in fact speaking about the diminishing faith of his countrymen and women. He describes, “The Sea of Faith” once covered all of the “round earth’s shore” and held everyone together like a girdle. Now though, this time has passed. No longer is the populous united by a common Christian faith in God by, as Arnold sees it, spread apart by new sciences and conflicting opinions. 

The comparison that he has been crafting between the drawing away, and coming in of the sea is now made clear as his speaker says there is no longer any return. The sea is only receding now, “melancholy,” and “long.” 

It is retreating from England and from the rest of the lands of the earth and leaving the people exposed. 

Fourth Stanza

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.

    At the beginning of the fourth stanza, it becomes clear that the companion who is looking out over the water with the speaker is most likely a lover or romantic partner. 

He speaks now directly to her, and perhaps, to all those true believers in God that are still out there. He asks that they remain true to one another in this “land of dreams.” The world is no longer what it was, it is more like a dream than the reality he is used to. It is a land that appears to be full of various beautiful, new, and joyous things but that is not the case. This new world is in fact without “joy…love…[or] light…certitude… [or] peace,” or finally, help for those in pain. It is not what it appears to be. 

The poem concludes with a pessimistic outlook on the state of the planet. As the people are suffering around the world on “a darkling plain,” confused and fighting for things they don’t understand, real suffering is going on and faith is slipping away. 

(Source: Poem analysis.com\mathew-arnold\dover-beach)