Imagery of Dover Beach

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Fita Brigita Mr. Singgih Darul Kuncara, M. Hum. English Literature 2012 June 11, 2014 Imagery of Dover Beach From the title “Dover Beach” a poem written by Matthew Arnold, I can imagine this poem is about a beach or a sea that will be describe in this poem. I searched where Dover Beach is. According to englishtowns.net, “Dover is a town in South East England which faces Frances across the narrowest part of the English Channel.”

So, I assumed that Matthew Arnold was in this city, wrote this poem in the seaside of England. According to victorianweb.org : “Matthew Arnold married on the 10th June 1851. On the 1 September, they took a ferry from Dover to Calais and then travelled on to Paris. It is not clear whether the Dover Beach was written on 1 September, or whether Arnold had already written a draft of it earlier.”

From this statement, I do not know when the Dover Beach was written exactly. But this poem was first published in 1867 in the collection New Poems. Matthew Arnold used visual imagery because he describes how Dover Beach Looks. As we can look in the first stanza: “The sea is calm to-night, The tide is full, the moon lies fair” (line 1-2)

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As I see in this poem, Matthew Arnold describes the Dover Beach in the evening, when the tide is full and the moon lies fair. He also representation of Dover Beach itself. In the third line until the fifth. “Upon the straits; on the French coast light” (line 3). As I explain before, this poem describes the Dover Beach. As I know that Dover is near with Calais, one of the northest cities on French. According to englishtown.net: “Dover is near the extreme south-east corner of Britain. At South Foreland, the nearest point to the continent, Cap Griz Nez near Calais is 34 kilometers (21 mil) away, across the Strait of Dover.” My lecturer explained “Gleams and is gone” in the forth stanza means the light which is flickering from the city across the Dover Beach, which is Calais. I agree with my lecturer because the distance from Dover to the Calais just 21 miles, it is possible to see the light which is glimmering. “The cliffs of England stand” in the forth stanza describe the white cliffs of Dover itself. Dover is famous with its white cliffs which also can be seen across France. On the next line, he also said “glimmering and vast” which the light is over Dover Beach. Until this line, Matthew Arnold still describes Dover Beach with visual imagery. In my opinion, he used visual imagery because he wants to describe how Dover Beach looks like to the reader at first. Me as a reader who never been in Dover Beach can imagine how Dover Beach likes: the view of the flickering light from France and also the view of moon in the evening. “Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!” (In stanza 1 line 6), it means he is in a building which has a window.

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‘Sweet’ in this line refers to her lover. He describes the situation at that moment with his lover. I can imagine they look out the window, see the Dover Beach view together and feel the night air. And in the next line, he describes the wave from Dover Beach. He also describes how the sea looks like in the evening. He tells that ‘the see meets the moonblanched land’. I think it means the reflection of the moon in the water (sea). Until this line, Matthew Arnold still used the visual imagery to describe Dover Beach. But, let see in line 9: “Listen! You hear the grating roar” In this line, he used the word ‘listen’. From that word I can concluded that he used auditory imagery in this line. He describe the sound (what he has heard) in Dover Beach. He and his lover hear the grating roar. It causes of the pebbles and the waves met each other and make the grating roar. It He reflected his sadness, his feeling with the sound of the waves. From the first stanza, I can see the difference from line 1-9 which is used visual imagery with line 10-15 which used auditory imagery. It was very contrast that Matthew Arnold want to show the differences of the situation from those imagery. In the line 1-9, I feel that the situation of the Dover Beach is calm, quiet, with the beautiful view. But in the line 10-15, I can feel the differences. The Dover Beach which is describe as a calm, quiet with beauty, it turned out with the grating roar from the pebbles which is being dragged by the waves. It can be concluded that what imagery that we used can show the different situation because what we see and what we hear are different. In the second stanza, Matthew Arnold told about Sophocles. According to ancientgreece.com: “Sophocles was born about 496 BC in Colonus Hippius (now part of Athens), he was to become one of the great playwrights of the golden age. Sophocles wrote more than 100 plays of which seven complete tragedies and fragments of 80 or 90 others are preserved.”

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In this stanza, Matthew Arnold describes how Sophocles heard from Aegean. Matthew Arnold wants to describe the human misery, sadness from Sophocles. From the explanation above, we know that Sophocles was an ancient greek tragedy playwright. So he wants to reflect Sopochles’s tragedy play with the condition of the tragedy atmosphere at that moment. In the third stanza, there is “The sea of Faith” which is described as one, full, and round the earth’s shore. He compares the sea of faith with the wave which is furled. In line 4, he used auditory imagery. He uses sense of hearing to describe his feeling. The atmosphere is melancholy with the sound of the wave which is withdrawing roar. With the night-wind, in the edges drear and see the Dover Beach without pebbles in the ground. So, I assumed that it described the despair of the faith that has been mentioned on the first line. In the last stanza, he describes the world which seems lie. But he said that the world is beautiful, so various, so new. I think how he describes world is, it seems that he see hope although he feels sadness, lost of faith. In line 35, there is “a darkling plain”. He describes that he and his lover is in the darkness. Which is means that they lost their hope. And like Sopochles’s play, I think the ending is tragedy. They are still in the darkness, sadness, and no hope. From all of those imagery, we can see that Matthew Arnold used nature to describe Dover Beach. How nature pictured Dover Beach with the moon, waves, cliffs, sea, edges and pebbles. And also with the auditoy, he describes the condition in Dover Beach with the sound of waves. Arnold makes us like we have seen the real Dover Beach. Matthew Arnold used nature because he is naturalist. In all of his poems, he used nature to describe something that he wants to deliver to the reader.

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Works Cited ancientgreece.com. People: Sophocles. 2012. 09 June 2014 . bachelorandmaster. Dover Beach: Matther Arnold - Summary and Critical Analysis. 2012. 2014 . BBC. Australia Flights resume as volcanic ash disperses. 1 June 2014. 2014 . BookRags, Inc. "Dover Beach, An Analysis." 2004. BookRags. 06 June 2014 . English Towns. Dover. 23 January 2012. 05 June 2014 . "Free Essays: The Message of Dover Beach." 123HelpMe.com. 06 June 2014 . I.Saeed, John. Semantics. United State of America: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1997. Poetry Foundation. Dover Beach. 2000. 2014 . Swedenborg, E. Sea. 2002. 2014 . Touche, Julia. The Biographical Contexts of "Dover Beach" and "Calais Sands": Matthew Arnold in 1851. June 2000. 05 June 2014 .

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