"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold and "Dover Bitch" by Anthony Hecht are
             poems that on the surface are based on the same subject--love. Though both
             poems are about love, the poems are not alike. The love that Matthew
             Arnold describes is a serious one, while the love that Hecht describes is,
             arguably, not love at all, but simply desire. "Dover Bitch" uses the
             "Dover Beach" as a platform to speak of love in a tone that is crass and
             hollow feelingâ€"a feeling that has more to do with satisfying a physical
             desire than with satisfying an emotional desire. Both poets achieve their
             goals through the use of different tones.
             Through Matthew Arnold's choice of words and poetic descriptions of
             place that play on the senses, "Dover Beach" is obviously a serious poem
             about love and desire. Even without knowing that "Dover Bitch" is a
             parody, a reader can understand that the tone of the poem is one of
             mockery. To illustrate, "Dover Beach" builds on sights, "light gleams and
             is gone," (Arnold, 3-4) as well as sounds, "grating roar," (Arnold, 9) to
             lend a romantic tone to the poem through visualization. Arnold establishes
             his tone in lines such as the ones describing the sea's ebb and flowâ€"the
             sea meeting the moon and then washing into the pebbles (Arnold, 8-10),
             Arnold makes a case that past and present, and good and bad can become
             harmonious if lovers will only be true (Arnold, 29).
             On the other hand, "Dover Bitch" is much more crass about the love,
             rather the desire, it describes. The tone he uses to describe desire is
             different from Arnold's and serves to mock love. In the first stanza Hecht
             leaves no doubt that the poem is a parody on "Dover Beach" and the reader
             realizes that the tone is a different as the Victorian times, when Matthew
             Arnold penned "Dover Beach", and the 1960s, when Anthony Hecht penned
             Instead of maximizing th...