Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold, 1867

Dover Beach - Poem by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm to-night.
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-blanch'd 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 {AE}gean, 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 furl'd.
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.
Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold
What is The Context?


This poem was written by Matthew Arnold. He was born in Laleham, Middlesex, in December 24, 1822. He was early in his life recognized as a poet at Rugby School, where his father worked as a strict headmaster. He went to college at Balliol College, Oxford University. Later in his life he returned to Oxford as a poetry professor and was the first to lecture in English rather than Latin. He lived and wrote within the beliefs of the people of the Victorian Era. Most of his poems are meditative and rhetorical. His main plot within his writings wrestles with problems of physical and mental isolation. In “Dover Beach”, he links the problem of isolation with the deterioration of faith in his time. His writing tried to re enlighten the belief in Christianity to his society through his poems. He was afraid that people would stop believing in God altogether and will therefore be left alone. His greatest fear would be that God in fact does not exist, and that he would be left alone. He held a great comfort in his strong belief in God that he was not alone, but the society's lack of belief led him to slightly falter in his own beliefs and feel more isolated. He clearly talks about how God exists and talks about his feelings in a very transparent, open way.

What is the artist trying to communicate and how?

The author uses this poem to truthfully express the reality of how dark life can be sometimes. “Dover Beach” expresses the sense of loneliness that everyone feels in their life. This can help the readers because we feel less alone when we realize that we are not the only ones that are alone. Everyone goes through life separately, and we all experience judgement. We never sense that we fit in, even when we do. We never feel good enough for others. We are afraid to be successful and different because we are afraid of rejection, failure, and judgement. This poem tells us that everyone has these feelings and therefore we are not alone. This in a way the author is trying to help people attain the confidence in their life to know that they can do and be whoever they want to be and the only thing that anyone will really think when they achieve their goal is that they are jealous because they were too scared to pursue their dreams because of fear of failure. The last paragraph in particular tells us how we should open up to each other for acceptance in order to avoid isolation. This poem attempts to communicate that there will always be bad times, and we can pursue through them for the light at the end of the tunnel. If we will always have such hard times in our life, why don't we approach those times as we strive for our goals rather than hiding in our comfort zone? If either way we have hard times, we might as well have higher times when the times are high doing things that we love. The two main themes that are demonstrated by this artist is that you are not alone and there will always be dark times in your life that you have to learn to accept.

Why is is Beautiful?
I find this piece of art very beautiful because of its depth and very belief centered purpose. The way it was composed and the words used are also very well picked and flow very elegantly. It is beautiful in a dark way that one might not expect. People often find beauty in happy colorful things but I like how this artist takes a different approach to create beauty. I think how he tries to tell how we are alone together is a very complex beautiful concept. I think that this is beautiful in the welcoming openness that it is written in. I love when poets writings are so open and personal to the readers. I think that it ties a beautiful connection between the writer in a reader. I think that the ways that he tries to display how we need to have God in our lives is also beautiful. He describes how empty we are without him. It helps us to understand how God is the origin for our world and how much he loves us. The last paragraph talks about how beautiful the world that God make for us is, and how amazing the people around us are. The community that he invites us to accept is beautiful. When we take God out of the equation, what is left?