Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (1867)

# The poem is a reflection upon Arnold's contemporary Victorian life; the conflicts of the age; the loss of values; the rising clouds of doubts.

# Arnold discloses his melancholy preoccupation with the thought of the inevitable decline of religious faith.

# The poet is at the Dover straits - which is the closest beach to France. He is brooding over the evils that are haunting his country.

# The Sea is usually taken as a symbol of misery and death, but Arnold uses it as a symbol of Faith and Hope.

# The opening of the poem is perhaps the finest expression of the symbolic sense of the night quiet which provided the setting and emotional background for so much of Arnold's elegiac meditations.

" 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, "

# The poem begins with a very pleasant note. The image of a moonlit night that adorns a calm and serene sea contrasts the real content of Arnold's fears.

# The poet urges his dearest (probably his wife, Frances Lucy Wightman) to come to the window and enjoy the sweet night air. He describes to her the beauty of the sight they are beholding.

" 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. "

# But slowly he slips off into the melancholy note. He urges her to listen to "the grating roar / Of pebbles pebbles" which the waves draw back and forth in the beach.

# He observes that the music created thus, which begin slowly, then end and then begin again, is a music that strikes "an eternal note of sadness".

 " 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 great Greek dramatist Sophocles in his play "Antigone" (BC 441), compares the curse upon a house as waves throwing up on the Ægean Sea. He imagined the back and forth movement of the sea waves as representative of the unpredictable nature of human life and its problems ("the turbid ebb and flow/Of human misery").

# Arnold connects it with the earlier music of the pebbles and the waves.

# He remarks that not only did they realize the curse but they were also moved by a greater thought as they heard it by the beach.

 " The Sea of Faith
   Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
   Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. "

# The poet thinks about a glorious past where the "Sea of Faith" covered/protected England from all other evils. The Sea of Faith is further described as a bright girdle that cloaked the country.

# He refers to the middle ages when the church was supreme and faith was of paramount importance.

 " 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. "

# But now the Sea is withdrawing; it means that the Faith is receding. Arnold uses the word "retreating", which suggests that the decrease in faith is more vigorous than ever.

# And now, in the night (which signifies a spiritual darkness as well) only a few shingles (small pieces) of faith remains.

# As the sea withdraws further to a great distance, leaving a vast stretch of dreary sea coast of pebbles, the faith in religion recedes further and further away leaving a great void of religious upset and scepticism.

 " 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; "

# The poet realizes that the world that they have before them has no more beauty, novelty, real joy, love, light/knowledge, truth, peace or compassion. The world is but a land of dreams that do nothing but lie.

# Therefore he urges his beloved to love him truly like he will. He expresses his belief that only through this love relationship can he realize values to which the world is so hostile.

 " And we are here as on a darkling plain
   Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
   Where ignorant armies clash by night. "

# The final lines echo the true plight of the Victorian society. England has become a "darkling plain", with no light of true knowledge and spiritual enlightenment. The inhabitants of the nation are compared to soldiers of different armies.

# The problem is that these armies are ignorant and are fighting by the night, confused by the "alarms of struggle and flight", where they cannot distinguish between a friend and an enemy.

# This image is taken from Thucydides' "The History of the  Peloponnesian War", where he writes about the fight between the Athenians and the Spartans at Cicily, fought at night under great confusion.