Dover Beach

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Dover Beach 1 The sea is calm to-night. 2 The tide is full, the moon lies fair 3 Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light 4 Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 5 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 6 Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! 7 Only, from the long line of spray 8 Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land, 9 Listen! you hear the grating roar 10 Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 11 At their return, up the high strand, 12 Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 13 With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 14 The eternal note of sadness in. 15 Sophocles long ago 16 Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought 17 Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 18 Of human misery; we 19 Find also in the sound a thought, 20 Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 21 The Sea of Faith 22 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore 23 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d. 24 But now I only hear 25 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 26 Retreating, to the breath 27 Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 28 And naked shingles of the world. 29 Ah, love, let us be true 30 To one another! for the world, which seems 31 To lie before us like a land of dreams, 32 So various, so beautiful, so new, 33 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 34 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 35 And we are here as on a darkling plain 36 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 37 Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Notes 1–6] In these first six lines Arnold presents a beautiful and tranquil scene sea, in a very positive way. He uses words like ‘calm,’ ‘fair,’ ‘stand,’ and ‘sweet’ to establish this mood. 2–3] moon…straits: The water reflects the image of the moon.

2 3–4] light…gone: This clause establishes a sense of rhythm in that the light blinks on and off. In addition, the clause foreshadows the message of later lines—that the light of faith in God and religion, once strong, now flickers. Whether an observer at Dover can actually see a light at Calais depends on the height of the lighthouse and the altitude at which the observer sees the light (because of the curvature of the earth), on the brightness of the light, and on the weather conditions. 4–5] cliffs…vast: The famous White Cliffs of Dover are composed of chalk, a limestone that easily erodes. Like the light from France, they glimmer, further developing the theme of a weakening of the light of faith. The fact that they easily erode supports this theme. 7–8] Lines 7 and 8 mark a transition in the stanza. The phrase ‘long line of spray,’ which describes what results when the sea meets the land, introduces action and perhaps even contention in the poem. 8] moon-blanch’d: whitened by the moon. 9–14] In direct contrast to his peaceful and pleasing description of the seashore, the speaker begins to contemplate the movement of the waves. Arnold uses words like ‘grating roar’ and ‘fling’ to achieve a feeling of tension and energy. He moves from the visual images of the first lines to sound descriptions as he details a darker side of the scene. The endless motion of the waves described in Lines 12–14 evokes sadness in the speaker. ‘Eternal note of sadness’ is echoed again later in the phrase ‘human misery’ in Line 18 and seems to describe the malaise of mankind throughout history rather than the specific problems of the speaker. 9–10] grating…pebbles: Here, grating (meaning rasping, grinding, or scraping) introduces conflict between the sea and the land and, symbolically, between long-held religious beliefs and the challenges against them. However, it may be an exaggeration that that pebbles cause a ‘grating roar.’ 11] the high strand: upper part of a coastline, perhaps what lies just above the tide-marks. 15] Arnold alludes here to a passage in the ancient Greek play Antigone, by Sophocles, in which Sophocles says the gods can visit ruin on people from one generation to the next, like a swelling tide driven by winds. 16] it=‘the eternal note of sadness’ (Line 14). 17] turbid: muddy, cloudy. 19] Find…thought: In the sound of the sea, the poet ‘hears’ a thought that disturbs him as did the one heard by Sophocles. 20] distant northern sea: contrasts with Sophocles’ Ægean—recalls us to the poet’s own time and place. 23] girdle: sash, belt; anything that surrounds or encircles. 28] shingles: round, loose, waterworn pebbles on the seashore.

3 33–34] neither…pain: The world has become a selfish, cynical, amoral, materialistic battlefield; there is much hatred and pain, but there is no guiding light. 35] darkling: obscure, dim; becoming dark; occurring in darkness; menacing, dangerous, ominous. 37] Arnold’s father was headmaster at his school, and was well-known for teaching his pupils about the chaotic night-battle at Epipolae, when Athenian warriors—unable to see—killed friend and enemy alike, as recorded by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. The line ‘suggests the confusion of mid-Victorian values of all kinds’ (E.K. Brown and J.O. Bailey).

Commentary RHYTHM AND RHYME The underlying, yet easily overlooked, lack of a pattern in the rhyme scheme reflects the speaker’s inner debate: it creates an effect of conflict and confusion.. The rhyme scheme of the first stanza consists of ABACD. The first and third lines rhyme, ‘to-night’ and light,’ but no other lines rhyme in the first stanza. The same instance occurs in the second stanza’s rhyme scheme of BDCEFCGHG. Multiple lines do rhyme, but in no set pattern. This opposes the pattern of the iambic rhyme of the first stanza.The first two sections each consist of 14 lines that suggest but do not achieve strict sonnet form, and except for a short (three foot) opening line, the last section emulates the octave (first part, with eight lines) of a sonnet, but closes with a single, climactic line instead of a sestet (second part, with six lines)—as though the final five lines had been eroded. ‘Dover Beach’ consists of four rhymed stanzas. The stanzas and lines are of uneven length: this reflects the confusion in the mind of the poet.. The first stanza consists of 14 lines, the second of six, the third of eight and the last line of nine lines. The rhyme scheme is very irregular. For example, in the first eight lines of the poem it is abac dbdc. In the last stanza, we can find seven lines of iambic pentameter (l.31-37), with the rhyme scheme of abbacddcc. ‘Dover Beach’ is a three stanza poem that contains a different number of lines in each stanza. About half of the lines in the poem are in iambic pentameter, while the rest of the lines contain two to four feet. The rhyme scheme in the poem appears to be abac, dbdc. The words ‘But now’ in line 24 are a caesura (there is a break in the form and content of the poem). The first three lines of the stanza create a feeling of hope, whereas the last lines sound sad and hopeless. The word ‘only’ emphasizes the speaker’s loneliness. To amplify the negative mood of the last lines Arnold uses words such as ‘melancholy’, ‘drear’ and ‘naked’. Point of View The poet/persona uses first-, second-, and third-person point of view in the poem. Generally, the poem presents the observations of the author/persona in third-person point of view but shifts to second person when he addresses his beloved, as in Line 6 (Come), Line 9 (Listen! you), and Line 29 (let). Then he shifts to first-person point of view when he includes his beloved and the reader as co-observers, as in Line 18 (we), Line 29 (us), Line 31 (us), and Line 35 (we). He also uses first-person point of view to declare that at least one observation is his alone, and not necessarily that of his co-observers. This instance occurs in Line 24: But now I only hear. This line means But now I alone hear.

4 Who Is the Listener? (Line 29) The person addressed in the poem—Lines 6, 9, and 29—is Matthew Arnold’s wife, Frances Lucy Wightman. However, since the poem expresses a universal message, one may say that she can be any woman listening to the observations of any man. Arnold and his wife visited Dover Beach twice in 1851, the year they were married and the year Arnold was believed to have written ‘Dover Beach.’ At that time Arnold was inspector of schools in England, a position he held until 1886. Theme Arnold’s central message is this: Challenges to the validity of long-standing theological and moral precepts have shaken the faith of people in God and religion. In Arnold’s world of the mid-1800’s, the pillar of faith supporting society was perceived as crumbling under the weight of scientific postulates, such as the evolutionary theory of English physician Erasmus Darwin and French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Consequently, the existence of God and the whole Christian scheme of things was cast in doubt. Arnold, who was deeply religious, lamented the dying of the light of faith, as symbolized by the light he sees in ‘Dover Beach’ on the coast of France, which gleams one moment and is gone the next. He remained a believer in God and religion, although he was open to—and advocated—an overhaul of traditional religious thinking. In God and the Bible, he wrote: ‘At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is.’ Type of Work ‘Dover Beach’ is a poem with the mournful tone of an elegy and the personal intensity of a dramatic monologue. Because the meter and rhyme vary from line to line, the poem is said to be in free verse--that is, it is unencumbered by the strictures of traditional versification. However, there is cadence in the poem, achieved through the following: Alliteration Examples: to-night, tide; full, fair; gleams, gone; coast, cliff (Stanza 1) Parallel Structure Example: The tide is full, the moon lies fair (Stanza 1); So various, so beautiful, so new (Stanza 4); Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (Stanza 4) Rhyming Words Examples: to-night, light; fair, night-air; stand, land; bay, spray; fling, bring; begin, in (Stanza 1) Words Suggesting Rhythm Examples: draw back, return; Begin, and cease, then begin again (Stanza 1); turbid ebb and flow (Stanza 2)

Figures of Speech Alliteration: to-night, tide; full, fair (Lines 1–2); gleams, gone; coast, cliff; long line; which the waves; folds, furled. Assonance: tide, lies; Paradox and Hyperbole: grating roar of pebbles Metaphor: which the waves draw back, and fling (comparison of the waves to an intelligent entity that rejects that which it has captured) Metaphor: turbid ebb and flow of human misery (comparison of human misery to the ebb and flow of the sea)

5 Metaphor: The Sea of Faith (comparison of faith to water making up an ocean) Simile: The Sea of Faith…lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled (use of like to compare the sea to a girdle) Metaphor: breath of the night-wind (comparison of the wind to a living thing) Simile: the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams (use of like to compare the world to a land of dreams) Anaphora: So various, so beautiful, so new (repetition of so); nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (repetition of nor) STRUCTURE This poem is structured in 4 stanzas which have different amount of lines. The first stanza consists of 14 lines, the second of 6, the third of 8 and the last one of 9 lines. The first stanza can be divided into 2 parts. In the first part (line 1 to 6), the sea is described in a very positive way. This can be seen because the poet uses adjectives such as ‘fair’, ‘tranquil’, ‘calm’ etc. But, after line 7, that harmonious atmosphere changes into sadness. In the second stanza, it is said that Sophocles heard the sadness of the sea (long ago). And this sadness is compared to human misery. In the third stanza the sea is called the ‘Sea of faith’ to show that once humanity was more religious. The first three lines of this stanza create a feeling of hope, whereas the last lines sound sad and hopeless. The last stanza can be seen as a conclusion of the preceding ones. In this last one it is illustrated the contrast between hope and reality. There was a time when faith in God was strong and comforting, protecting people from doubt and despair. Now, however, the sea of faith has become a sea of doubt. New ideas in science and society challenge religion and traditions; human misery makes people feel lonely. People place their faith in material things. • Sophocles was a Greek tragedian (Oedipus complex in Freudian theory comes from there) • The ‘different’ rhythm to the poem(2nd stanza) the poet insists on completing his sentences • The comparison with Sophocles by the Aegean Sea • ‘Come to the window..’ -Dramatic Monologue • The Contrast present in every stanza • A reference to the French revolution-false dawn with Napoleon winning but then resorting to dictatorship • The beginning to the poem is somewhat pleasant and hence deceptive • The comparison to the armies fighting by night in the fourth stanza, stands for

6 indistinguishability between friend and foe. The Sea of Faith receding refers to the changing world where religion is losing its importance • ‘Naked Shingles’ refers to the unprotected masses • The repetition of ‘nor’ -stress on negativity. RHETORICAL DEVICES Anaphora in lines 4 and 5 ‘Gleams and glimmering’, to underline the harmonious atmosphere of the first six lines. Throughout the poem, the sea is used as an image and a metaphor. At first, it is beautiful to look at in the moonlight (ll.1-8), then it begins to make hostile sounds (‘grating roar’ (l. 9); ‘tremulous cadence’ (l.13)) that evoke a general feeling of sadness. In the third stanza, the sea is turned into a metaphoric ‘Sea of Faith’ (l.21) — a symbol for a time when religion could still be experienced without the doubts brought about by progress and science (Darwinism). Now, the ‘Sea of Faith’ and thus the certainty of religion withdraws itself from the human grasp and leaves only darkness behind. The superficial calmness and beauty prevailing in the world (represented by the sea) is revealed as empty and hopeless. Simile in the third stanza, line 22: ‘bright girdle furl’d’ emphasizes how religious faith was wrapped around and protected people. Matthew Arnold’s Development of Setting

Notice the form of the poem. Overlooking the absence of regular iambics, see that the first stanza is comprised of 14 lines and pivots at \’Only.\’ Sonnet written all over it--a standard/traditional form coinciding with the mind-dominant (as opposed to spirit-dominant) Renaissance (during which time the attitudes of the ancient Greeks, including Sophocles, were \’reborn.\’) The next stanza--Sophocles\’ projected tragic vision--is eight lines, followed by the complementary six of the retreating \’Sea of Faith\’ third stanza. Something has now broken. With the final nine lines as ignorant armies clash in the darkness, the classical poetic form of the sonnet has devolved into formless chaos. Arnold beheld his progressive, aggressive world and began serenely: ‘The sea is calm tonight./ The tide is full, the moon lies fair/ Upon the Straits . . . Come to the window, sweet is the night air!’ A long, successful life lay ahead of him. His new bride was near by. But by the end of the stanza, he was hearing the ‘eternal note of sadness’ in the sea and the rolling of the pebbles, and by the second stanza, the ‘ebb and flow/ Of human misery’ was overwhelming. The final lines of Dover Beach are racked with disillusionment about a ‘world which seems/ To lie before us like a land of dreams,/ So various, so beautiful, so new,’ but

7 that had ‘neither joy, nor love, nor light,/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.’ The only way to survive what Arnold in another poem called ‘this strange disease of modern life’ was for people to ‘be true to one another.’ He pledged constancy to the woman near him. That lovers may be ‘true/To one another’ is a precarious notion: love in the modern city momentarily gives peace, but nothing else in a post-medieval society reflects or confirms the faithfulness of lovers. Devoid of love and light the world is a maze of confusion left by ‘retreating’ faith.’

Analysis Critics have questioned the unity of the poem, noting that the sea of the opening stanza does not appear in the final stanza, while the ‘darkling plain’ of the final line is not apparent in the opening. Various solutions to this problem have been proffered. One critic saw the ‘darkling plain’ with which the poem ends as comparable to the ‘naked shingles of the world.’ Beginning in the present it shifts to the classical age of Greece, then (with its concerns for the sea of faith) it turns to Medieval Europe, before finally returning to the present.

Comments on Form and Structure ‘Dover Beach’ consists of four stanzas, each containing a variable number of verses. The first stanza has 14 lines, the second 6, the third 8 and the fourth 9. As for the metrical scheme, there is no apparent rhyme scheme, but rather a free handling of the basic iambic pattern. In stanza 3 there is a series of open vowels (‘Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ (l. 25). A generally falling syntactical rhythm can be detected and continues into stanza 4. In this last stanza one can find seven lines of iambic pentameter (l.31-37), with the rhyme scheme of abbacddcc. According to Ruth Pitman, this poem can be seen as ‘a series of incomplete sonnets’ (quoted in Riede 196), and David G. Riede adds: The first two sections each consist of 14 lines that suggest but do not achieve strict sonnet form, and except for a short (three foot) opening line, the last section emulates the octave of a sonnet, but closes with a single, climactic line instead of a sestet — as though the final five lines had been eroded. (197) The thoughts do not appear as obviously structured and organised as in ‘Calais Sands’, which is accentuated by the fact that run-on lines are mixed with end-stopped lines. In the first stanza the rhythm of the poem imitates the ‘movement of the tide’ (l.9-14). [Roy Thomas, How to read a Poem? (London: University of London Press Ltd, 1961) 102. Hereafter cited as ‘Thomas.’

Terms of Art The last ‘is’ emphasises that the light is not there, that it cannot be seen any longer, but is gone and leaves nothing but darkness behind. In a metaphorical sense of the word, not only the light is gone, but also certainty. The darkness makes it hard to define both one’s own and somebody else’s position, and one can never be certain that the light will ever return.

8 A repetition of neither...nor in stanza 4 underlines a series of denials: ‘. . . neither joy, nor love, nor light/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;’ (l. 33-34) [emphasis mine]. All these are basic human values. If none of these do truly exist, this raises the question of what remains at all. With these lines, Arnold draws a very bleak and nihilistic view of the world he is living in. As in ‘Calais Sands’, he uses a lot of adjectives to enrich the poem’s language, such as ‘tremulous cadence’ (l.13) and ‘eternal note of sadness’ (l.14). These help to increase the general melancholic feeling of the poem. Exclamations are used at various points of the poem with quite opposite effects. In the first stanza, Arnold displays an outwardly beautiful nightly seaside scenery, when the lyrical self calls his love to the window (‘Come . .. !’ (l.6)) to share with him the serenity of the evening. First she is asked to pay attention to the visual, then to the aural impression (‘Listen!’ (l.9)).

Theme and Subject The first stanza opens with the description of a nightly scene at the seaside. The lyrical self calls his addressee to the window, to share the visual beauty of the scene. Then he calls her attention to the aural experience, which is somehow less beautiful. The lyrical self projects his own feelings of melancholy on to the sound of ‘the grating roar /Of pebbles, which the waves draw back, and fling/ At their return, up the high strand’ (ll.9-11). This sound causes an emotion of ‘sadness’ (l.14) in him. The second stanza introduces the Greek author Sophocles’ idea of ‘the turbid ebb and flow of human misery’ (ll.17-18). A contrast is formed to the scenery of the previous stanza. Sophocles apparently heard the similar sound at the ‘Aegean’ sea (l. 16) and thus developed his ideas. Arnold then reconnects this idea to the present. Although there is a distance in time and space (‘Aegean’ — ‘northern sea’ (L. 20)), the general feeling prevails. In the third stanza, the sea is turned into the ‘Sea of Faith’ (l.21), which is a metaphor for a time (probably the Middle Ages) when religion could still be experienced without the doubt that the modern (Victorian) age brought about through Darwinism, the Industrial revolution, Imperialism, a crisis in religion, etc.) Arnold illustrates this by using an image of clothes (‘Kleidervergleich’). When religion was still intact, the world was dressed (‘like the folds of a bright girdle furled’ (l. 23)). Now that this faith is gone, the world lies there stripped naked and bleak. (‘the vast edges drear/ And naked shingles of the world’ (ll. 27-28)) The fourth and final stanza begins with a dramatic pledge by the lyrical self. He asks his love to be ‘true’ (l.29), meaning faithful, to him. (‘Ah, love, let us be true /To one another!’ (ll. 2930)). For the beautiful scenery that presents itself to them (‘for the world, which seems/ To lie before us like a land of dreams,/ So various, so beautiful, so new’ (ll.30-32)) is really not what it seems to be. On the contrary, as he accentuates with a series of denials, this world does not contain any basic human values. These have disappeared, along with the light and religion and left humanity in darkness. ‘We’ (l.35) could just refer to the lyrical self and his love, but it could also be interpreted as the lyrical self addressing humanity. The pleasant scenery turns into a ‘darkling plain’ (l. 35), where only confused sounds of fighting can be heard.

9 The speaker’s problem also appears in the sounds of the words throughout the poem. The consonant quality of the g and the r in ‘grating roar’ (line 9) takes on an auditory quality, whereas the previous stanza displayed visual qualities. The grating and roaring pebbles produce sound while the calm sea and glimmering French coast produce a visual effect. In line 13, the hard ‘t,’ ‘c,’ and ‘s’ sounds in ‘tremulous cadence slow’ actually slow the tempo down. Likewise, after stanza two, the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas alternate euphonous sounds (stanza three and the first three lines of stanza four) and cacaphonous sounds (the last five lines of stanza four and all stanza five). The smooth sounds of l in line 7, ‘long line,’ and the f in line 23, ‘folds’ and ‘furled,’ point out the instances of illusion where the conflict of the illusion versus reality does not exist. In contrast, the rough sounds in line 28, ‘naked shingles of the world,’ indicate the places where reality not only exists, but where illusion cannot exist, and the speaker cannot escape his misery. Louis Untermeyer: ‘Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ is another monologue which is held together tightly by a single unifying image. [It is] a dissertation on the seeming beauty but actual meaninglessness of the world…a world in which the only faith is the faith of those who cling to each other.’