“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold

“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold and “Sonnet 29” by William Shakespeare : Poem Analysis and Comparison
Despite the difference of generations and world events, both Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29” and “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold share remarkable similarities in terms of love, hate, and the validity of these emotions in a complex and weary world. Both poets bemoan a sense of isolation, both in terms of God and the world in general. Given the overall melancholy tone of both poems, especially in lines dealing with everyday concerns such as war and jealousy, the only bright points in either work is when individual love is discussed. Both Arnold and Shakespeare often touched on darker themes, particularly Shakespeare in his sonnets and it is worth noting how love is addressed within the terms of some of these darker themes and how it either balances out or attempts to make compromises with some other aspects of the subject matter of either of these poems by Shakespeare or Matthew Arnold.
For Arnold and Shakespeare, the thought of love seems to break up the clouds, and the heaviness cast by humanity melts suddenly, “Like to the lark at break of day arising” (Shakespeare, “Sonnet 29” line 11). Along these same lines, the world and its troubles seem to fade in out, love and hate are intertwined and although there is the bright spot in each poem, it “Gleams and is gone” (“Dover Beach” line 4) and the dreary, lonely world is left to smother the love that once flickered as feelings of hate and sadness return. Interestingly, each poem ends on a political note as Arnold mentions the “ignorant armies” and Shakespeare brings up “the state with kings.” This may suggest that the hate derives from the world of men, of kings and armies, which leaves no room for the love that can only exist in these fleeting moments of love and a romantic clarity that lightens each of these texts considerably, if only for a gleaming moment. In other words, as the poem of Shakespeare suggests, the world is a dreary place but it is the brief glimpses of love that provide light and solace.
Unlike in the sonnet by Shakespeare, in Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach” the reader is introduced to the grand scene without moonlight as the only illumination. The tone itself is dark and ponderous as the speaker laments the days of Socrates and a time when faith still held mankind together. The heavy tone throughout the beginning is caused by the speaker’s opinion that few things make sense and humans are lost in the world. The speaker laments, “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” (l.29-33). The world the speaker speaks of lack light and any meaning and even wars are fought by the “ignorant armies” whom themselves are shrouded in darkness as they “clash by night” (l.36-37). While love is clearly the saving light and something that can give meaning to otherwise dark lives, the speaker’s plea to his lover indicates just as much desperation as it does romance. He feels that the loss of faith, as alluded to by the metaphor that religion is a receding tide and as it drifts away, has erased what little meaning one could glean from living, and with the disappearance of faith, all that is left is a world in which “ignorant armies” and darkness take over.
In the poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold, love provides the only solution, it is the only thing left for the speaker to cling to and provides the only glimpses of light the reader can see, especially since the poem occurs by moonlight. The image of the two lovers standing on the “darkling plain” is a very lonely one and one scholar has recognized that even the love these two seem to be clinging so desperately to may itself be hollow. “In a poem about a man and his beloved contemplating these matters, the inclusive passion does not sufficiently appear, either directly or by definitive contrast, even though we may like to assume that the passion is somewhere or somehow there. Are we then given two non-persons embracing nullity amid splendors of scene and history? Perhaps nullity is all that is left” (Carrithers 266). If this idea is correct then even those glimpses of light by the presence of love are set up their own “darkling plain” as they can only be seen through a fog, they are dimmer than may otherwise seem in a traiditional love poem. In many ways, it is fair to conclude that “Dover Beach” and Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29” are not necessarily poems about love, but about meaning; they discuss how love can give one meaning in a world that is consumed with hate and darkness.
In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29” there is a similar sense of darkness and a lack of faith in either God or humanity that later is offset by the light of love. The speaker of this Shakespeare sonnet troubles “deaf Heaven” with “bootless cries” and laments the sad thoughts he has about his “outcast state” and troubles of the world. It is only when “Haply I think on thee—and then my state / Life the lark at break of day arising / from sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate” (l.10-12). Much like the speaker in Arnold’s poem, in this sonnet by Shakespeare, the presence of love makes the godless world a better place to live in and returns him to thoughts of “heaven’s gate” as opposed to the envy and anger he feels at the beginning when he is without thoughts of the “wealth” of love. There is a speaker in this sonnet by Shakespeare that exists in the world of envy and hate, the one presented at the beginning of the poem who is said to be alone and to “beweep his outcast state” but this all changes when the security and light of love enters the poem with the sudden shift occurring at the use of the words “then my state” which changes.
One critic concurs with this observation about this issue in Shakespeare and adds, “The sonnet works out a consolation of sorts, in the form of a contrast between the persona’s perceptions before and after he thinks of his beloved, a contrast made all the more forceful because of the breakdown of the initiating when/then structure” (McRae 7). Much like in Arnold’s poem, in Sonnet 29 by Shakespeare, the world is shrouded in darkness and the vices of men as well as a lack of faith. It should also be noted that there is also the same sense of desperation in Shakespeare’s sonnet as exists in Arnold’s because both poets make it seem as though the love interest is the only object that can restore all that the dark world lacks, thus Shakespeare’s poem imbues the love interest with almost holy or religious significance when he associates his arrival at “heaven’s gate” through the light of love while Arnold’s poem uses the love interest, although she, like in the sonnet is quite hollow and faceless, to provide meaning in a world full of spite, hate, and a lack of faith. In sum, both the poem by Arnold and the sonnet by Shakespeare present a world that is rather dreary and even hopeless to the average man. In the midst of the chaos and general lack of faith, the only glimpses of light in such dark worlds are presented by love. Both poems by Shakespeare and Arnold open and are supported by ideas that their lives lack meaning aside from the shallow and vice-ridden concerns of the everyday and thus they feel they are living in darkness. The tone of both "Dover Beach" and Sonnet 29 by Shakespeare changes when love enters the picture, thus the reader is presented with images of hate and vice illuminated by the gleam that only love can provide.

Dover Beach
By Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
A Study Guide
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Time and Place
Point of View
Who Is the Listener?
Theme

Type of Work
Figures of Speech
Text With Explanations
Year of Publication

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Time and Place
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) wrote "Dover Beach" during or shortly after a visit he and his wife made to the Dover region of southeastern England, the setting of the poem, in 1851. They had married in June of that year. A draft of the first two stanzas of the poem appears on a sheet of paper he used to write notes for another another work, "Empedocles on Etna," published in 1852. The town of Dover is closer to France than any other port city in England. The body of water separating the coastline of the town from the coast of France is the Strait of Dover, north of the English Channel and south of the North Sea.
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.
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)
Year of Publication
Although Matthew Arnold completed "Dover Beach" in 1851 or 1852, the poem was not published until 1867. It appeared in a collection entitled New Poems, published in London.
Dover Beach
By Matthew Arnold
1
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-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......................................14
Notes, Stanza 1
moon . . . straits: The water reflects the image of the moon. A strait is a narrow body of water that connects two larger bodies of water. In this poem, straits refers to the Strait of Dover (French: Pas de Calais), which connects the English Channel on the south to the North Sea on the north. The distance between the port cities of Dover, England, and Calais, France, is about 21 miles via the Strait of Dover.
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.
cliffs . . . vast: These are white cliffs, 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.
moon-blanched: whitened by the light of the moon.
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.
strand: shoreline
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2
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............................20
Notes, Stanza 1
Sophocles . . . Aegean: 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.
it: "the eternal note of sadness" (Line 14).
Aegean: The sea between Greece and Turkey. In the time of Sophocles, the land occupied by Turkey was known as Anatolia.
turbid: muddy, cloudy
Find . . . thought: In the sound of the sea, the poet "hears" a thought that disturbs him as did the one heard by Sophocles.
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3
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..........................;........28
Notes, Stanza 3
Sea . . . full: See theme, above, for an explanation.
girdle: sash, belt; anything that surrounds or encircles
I only hear: I alone hear
shingles: gravel on the beach
Interpretation
There was a time when faith in God was strong and comforting. This faith wrapped itself around us, protecting us from doubt and despair, as the sea wraps itself around the continents and islands of the world. Now, however, the sea of faith has become a sea of doubt. Science challenges the precepts of theology and religion; human misery makes people feel abandoned, lonely. People place their faith in material things.
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4
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......................37
Notes, Stanza 4
neither . . . pain: The world has become a selfish, cynical, amoral, materialistic battlefield; there is much hatred and pain, but there is no guiding light.
darkling: dark, obscure, dim; occurring in darkness; menacing, threatening, dangerous, ominous.
Where . . . night: E.K. Brown and J.O. Bailey suggest that this line is an allusion to Greek historian Thucydides' account of the Battle of Epipolae (413 B.C.), a walled fortress near the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. In that battle, Athenians fought an army of Syracusans at night. In the darkness, the combatants lashed out blindly at one another. Brown and Bailey further observe that the line "suggests the confusion of mid-Victorian values of all kinds . . . " (Brown, E.K, and J.O. Bailey, eds. Victorian Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Ronald Press, 1962, Page 831).
Interpretation
Let us at least be true to each other in our marriage, in our moral standards, in the way we thnk; for the world will not be true to us. Although it presents itself to us as a dreamland, it is a sham. It offers nothing to ease our journey through life.
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Figures of Speech
Arnold uses a variety of figures of speech, including the following examples. (For definitions of the different figures of speech, see the glossary of literary terms:
Alliteration Examples 1: 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)
Metaphor: TheSea 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)
Anapora: nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (repetition of nor)