DOVER BEACH

By Matthew Arnold

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 Aegean, 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.

ANALYSIS

“Dover Beach”,   is a monologue  in verse, considered to be the “Forefather of Modern Sensibility.” It was written in the nineteenth century when Great Britain was wallowing in the  marvels of the Industrial Revolution. Matthew Arnold, a culture moralist, documented the shift from a  Christian  to a godless world represented by steam engines devoid of souls.

In the first stanza Arnold  sets the  reader in a peaceful albeit melancholy mood by giving a cool description of the setting of the poem. On a calm moonlit night when the tide is high, the poet looks out of the window of what we like to imagine as his honeymoon cottage  which stands on  the moon-blanched pebble beach  of the Dover area of Southeastern England. On the French coast while the lights wane and are finally gone , the cliffs of England eternally stand huge and “glimmering” , stretching out into the “tranquil bay” while the “night air” is “sweet”.

In the second stanza  Arnold’s lines echo the rhythmic cadence of the waves as they dash upon the shore , then withdraw in  repetitive pattern,  carrying pebbles  to the shore  creating a  grating roar. The sound slowly dies  giving way to the “eternal note of sadness”  which is actually the  subdued murmur of the broad- breasted sounding ocean—the ebb and tide of the waves imitative of the ocean’s hymn.

In the third stanza Arnold imagines the “turbid ebb and tide” of the waves to have been heard  by Sophocles ( a Greek tragedian)  when he wrote his plays (impliedly the Antigone, Electra, and Oedipus) whose recurring themes  focused on the history of human suffering.

In the fourth stanza  the enchantment of the first stanza  is clothed by pessimism: the “Sea of Faith” which once surrounded the earth as a “bright girdle”  has shrunk  into a “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”—a poetic eulogy  of the poignant lamentation of  humans devoid of spirituality.

In the last stanza Arnold provides a softener for all of mankind’s harsh realities in the form of his companion, a woman,  suggestive of  belongingness and affection in a  “darkling” world  devoid of love, peace, certainty, and joy  “where ignorant armies clash by night.”  ###