Dover Beach
How can life be so wonderful, but at times seem so unbearable? This is a question that Matthew Arnold may have asked himself, while writing "Dover Beach." The poem, one of Arnolds best works, is about a beach that is truly beautiful, but holds much deeper meaning than what meets the eye. Matthew Arnold presents a very real theme of love and splendor in his poem. He creates a scene of beauty among the sea and shores, mixed with night and moonlight(Harrison). Along with the beauty he also presents us with underlying misery, which is easily over looked and disregarded. Arnold writes really of love and loss and relates it with human misery. "Dover Beach" is the poignant expression of the desperate need for love which men feel in this world (Miller). As the narrator looks out his window, he sees a beautiful world of nature: the sea and the cliffs under the glow of the moon. Describing this scene to his lover, he invites her to "come to the window" so that she might see it too. From their lofty vantage point the moonlight reveals an ocean that lies calm, a tide that is full, the distant coast of France, and the cliffs of England(Ball). Arnold describes a night in which the gleam of the moonlight shimmers acros
The whole poem is based on a metaphor - Sea to Faith. " In stanza two, Arnold draws an analogy between the once full, but now receding tide and what he calls the "Sea of Faith(Jump). Arnold's intellectual background and culture leads him to recall the Greek drama, "Sophocles" when he compares the "Aegean's turbid ebb and flow" of the sea, to the flow of human misery. As Arnold shifts to the traditions of religion, he ironically suggests that those who recognize the persistent suffering of humanity must also acknowledge the decline of traditional religious faith. Thus, his speaker begs his lover to "let us be true to one another!" We learn that the narrator is speaking directly to his lover. The sea is starting to become rougher and agitated. He is then reminded of his own time and can hear the human misery that surrounds him and his love. It seems as if everything great in the past is gone, and the great ages of the future have not yet to come(Rowse). Religion provides no relief for his sadness, nor does social or political action(Riede). As he contemplates Dover Beach, Arnold hears the "melancholy, long withdrawing roar" of the "Sea of Faith. It seems as though Arnold is questioning his own faith. In these last nine lines, the land, which he thought was so beautiful and new, is actually nothing - "neither joy, nor love, nor light". The world changes constantly just like the pebbles that the waves fling continuously. Next, the waves come roaring into the picture, as they "draw back and fling the pebbles" onto the shore and back out to sea again(Spender 246).
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Acceptance Essays
