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!...