Dover Beach by Mathew Arnold Summary

 Dover Beach”

                                                                                   -Matthew Arnold

Introduction of the poem

‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold was published in 1867 in the volume entitled New Poems. He wrote this poem shortly after visiting with his wife, Frances Lucy Whitman, to the Dover region of south-east England. The poem is a dramatic monologue, in which the poet is lamenting on the loss of Christian faith in England during the mid-1800s as science captured the minds of the public. The speaker of the poem is the poet himself. The poem shows the poet’s concerns for the diminishing faith and values of Christianity and being unable to withstand the rising tide of scientific discoveries the poet laments on the new research and intellectual enquiry. Arnold mourns a society that has lost its cultural, moral and spiritual significance, the rise of cruelty, hopelessness, uncertainty and deception. Therefore, elegiac mood rises through it. 

Analysis of the poem

Stanza I

The poem begins with the pictorial description of the beach at Dover. The time is night. The poet is standing on the coast of the sea and observes it. The sea is very calm tonight. The tide is up on the seawater, and the moon is full upon the straits. The poet sees the light that gleams on the French coast and is gone. The fluctuating light denotes the fluctuating faith in God and religion. In the metaphorical sense, not only the light is gone, but it took away the certainty with itself. The poet shifts his attention to the vast cliffs of England that are stand tall and glimmering out in the peaceful bay. The first two lines show the scenic view creates a balance and harmony in nature, but later it turns into a pathos because now the light is gone and darkness left behind.

The poet asks his wife who is with him in the room to come up to the window and feel the sweet night air coming from the foamy sea waves dashing against the shore, where the sea meets the moon on the white land. The surface of the sea looks white because of the moonlight. The poet again asks his wife to listen to the pebbles’ harsh sound drawn by the sea waves. The waves sling the stones back to the sea and then again throws them back onto high shore on their return journey. This process begins and cease and then again begin and cease with slow but fearful rhythm. It brings an eternal note of sadness within. This repeated sound evokes melancholy in the poet’s mind, symbolising the disordered misery in human life. The receding waves represent the diminishing faith in the world.

Comments

Alliteration- “Gleams and is gone”, “long line”, “then again begin”

Tone- the tone of the stanza shifts from cheerful to melancholy in the end.

Rhyme scheme- there is no apparent rhyme scheme. However, few words rhyme with each other, but they do not create a regular rhyme scheme. For example, tonight-night, fair-air, stand-land-strand, bay-spray.

Diction is urban.

The repetition of “is” in the first four lines illustrates the nightly seaside scenery.

Auditory image: “Listen! You hear the grating roar” shows the sad, desperate and hopeless picture of the world.

Stanza II

In this stanza, the poet recalls the Greek playwright Sophocles’ idea of “the turbid ebb and flow of human misery”. He says that Sophocles long ago heard the sound as he stood upon the Aegean Seashore. The sound of the sea brought into his mind as the turbulence and flow of human misery. Here the sound of sea waves has been described as “the eternal note of sadness”. The poet reconnects his thoughts from the past to the present and says that we find his observation similar to Sophocles's idea after hearing the sound of waves of the English Channel which is far away from the Aegean Sea. Here the similarity in loss of faith can be seen between the classical Greek age and the nineteenth century. Sophocles has seen it as the time of human misery, and Arnold has seen it as the loss of faith in Christianity.

Comments 

The tone of the stanza is comparative.

The word brought-thought, ago-flow, we-sea rhymes with each other but there is no rhyme scheme in the stanza.

Allusion: the poet has given an allusion of the ancient Greek tragedian, Sophocles. This allusion enhances the sense of melancholy and sorrow in the poem and suggests that human misery is the same as Sophocles   time.

      Stanza III

In the third stanza, the sea turns into “sea of faith”. The poet says that there was a time when everyone believed in religion with full devotion. Religion united the whole humankind on this earth. The spiritual and religious faith which was once unbreakable is in its lowest now. The time here was probably the middle ages when religion was everything, but Darwin’s theory of Origin of Species in the Victorian era brought scientific knowledge. The industrial revolution, Imperialism, etc., were other reasons which attacked religion. The sea of faith that was once enveloped, just like a bright girdle fastened around an individual's waist, has now receded. Therefore, the poet hears only the melancholy as the long, retreating sea waves, because the faith on religion has declined. It happened because science challenged and questioned the spiritual ideas and religious believes. Therefore, love, faith is retreating with the night wind. Here night wind is the symbol of desolation and fear. Here perhaps the poet says that faith in religious beliefs is taking its last breath from the vast miserable world and due to lack of faith, the world is naked and exposed to the innumerable tribulations of the world.

Comments

The tone of the stanza is depressed.

Alliteration: “melancholy long”, “gurdle furl’d” 

Simile: “lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d”. Like the girdle, faith also embraced human civilisation and protected it from the world's evil aspects.

Metaphor: “the sea of faith”

“The grating roar” in the first stanza becomes “the withdrawing roar” in the third stanza. It suggests that the harsh sound that brought sadness with itself is now withdrawing itself because nothing is left in the name of faith. Only isolation, loneliness and melancholy is left.

        Stanza IV

This stanza represents the essence of Arnold’s poems. In this stanza, belief has been shown that leads to the melancholy which pervades almost all his poems. Arnold gives a ray of hope in the first two lines of the stanza but ends with a darkling note where the poet appears to be deeply pessimistic.

The poet tells his beloved to be committed in their love to each other. Love appears to be the only comfort in life in this world. With love, life seems beautiful, like a land of dreams, but it has no joy, love, hope, certainty or peace in reality. Neither is there any relief from the pain of life. People living in the world are like the ignorant armies on a dark plain; they fight confusedly. Some are battling with their army because they get confused in the night.

Similarly, human beings like ignorant armies are also fighting in the dark, fighting with whom or what for they do not know. They are ignorantly fighting with each other, and they are confused whether they should follow religion or science because science and religion are two opposite poles. Darkling plain suggests the world where so much restlessness, suffering and pain are there. It shows pessimism and gloomy picture of humanity.

Comments

The tone of the stanza is hopeful, but at the same time, it turns into pessimism.

Alliteration: “love, let”, “the world which”, “like a land”, “neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help…”, 

Simile: “like a land of dreams”

Confused life of man has been compared with the confused fight of ignorant armies on a darkling plain.

The poet has used archaic word “hath” 

The word true rhymes with new, seems–dreams, light-flight-night, pain-plain. 

The rhyme scheme of this stanza is abbacddcc. Although there is no particular rhyme in the whole poem.

The poet has used phrases like “land of dreams”, “a darkling plain”,