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Click the above images to get Video explanation for Dover Beach Poem
BA English Literature
[2nd Year, 3rd Semester]
British Literature
"Dover Beach" by
Matthew Arnold
About Poet:
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was a British
poet and critic during the Victorian era. In 1837, Arnold first attended the
Rugby School where his father, Thomas Arnold, was the headmaster. Arnold served
as Inspector of Schools in 1851 and for 35 years. He retired from school
inspecting in 1886 and died of a heart failure on April 15, 1888.
"Rugby Chapel" is an elegy that Matthew
Arnold wrote to his father fifteen years after his father's death. His major
works include Essays in Criticism (1865 and 1888), Culture and Anarchy (1869), and
Literature and Dogma (1873).
About Poem:
‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew
Arnold is a dramatic monologue that also has a Sonnet form. The poem was
written when Arnold was on honeymoon with his newly wedded bride.
It was published in 1867 in
the volume entitled New Poems.
The poem begins with the
calm, pleasant and soothing description of Dover beach.
‘Dover Beach’ is written in
irregular iambic pentameter. The poem consists of four stanzas, each of
different length. The first stanza is 14 lines, the second is 6, the third 8,
and the fourth 9.
Dover is a city in England that is famous for White Cliffs. The beach lies between England and France. The poet is on the England side and is watching the coast of France. The time is that of night.
Poem Line by Line
Explanation:
First Stanza:
1 -3 - It is night. The calm and quiet sea is filled with water at the
time of high-tide. The moon is shining brightly (fair) upon the narrow English Channel
(straits).
3-5 - Our speaker is staring at the French coast some twenty miles away
on the other side of the channel. He sees the light on the French coast
gleaming. And now, as the light has gone off, he concentrates on the English
shore instead. The famous cliffs (steep rocks on the sea shore) of Dover stand
tall with their large wavering reflections in the quiet sea.
6 - 8 - The speaker asks his mistress to come to the window to enjoy the
sweet night-air coming from where the sea meets the moonlit land of France.
9 - 11 - He now asks her to listen to the continuous and irritating
(grating) sound of the pebbles drawn by the waves. The waves are drawing the
stones backward to the sea and then again throwing (fling) them back onto high
shore (strand) on their return journey.
12 - 14 - The sound of the waves begins and stops, and again begins. The trembling rhythm continues slowly. But now, it brings the eternal note of sadness - the monotonous rhythm of the waves makes the speaker depressed. The tone of the poem now changes from cheerful to melancholy.
Second Stanza:
15 - 20 - The speaker is now reminded that Sophocles also heard the same
sound sitting on the shore of the Aegean Sea. That brought to his (Sophocles’)
mind the picture of human sufferings like muddy water (turbid) going in and out
(ebb and flow).
Our speaker has also found a feeling of sadness hearing similar sound beside the northern sea (The Strait of Dover is between the English Channel and the North Sea.) far away from Sophocles’ Aegean Sea.
Third Stanza:
21 - 23 - Human Faith, the religious faith and faith in fellow people
once covered the earth like sea water. It was at its fullest as the tide is
now. Faith covered the earth like the folds of a bright girdle folding (furled)
well. The comparison suggests that it was not loose, but tightly attached to
this world. It was the time when faith made everything easy and solved many
problem, made people united and brought meaning to life.
24 - 28 - The speaker regrets that those days are now past. Faith is fading away from the society just like the wave is from the shore. Now he only hears the sorrowful roar of the retreating steps of faith with the receding tides. It only leaves behind the chill night wind whistling (breath) over the desolate beach with dull (drear) edges of the cliffs and raw (naked) pebbles (shingles). The poet here creates a fearful picture of the underlying nakedness of the colourful modern world.
Fourth Stanza:
29 – 34 - The desolate speaker now again turns to his beloved and urges her to be faithful to each other. The dreamy modern world which seems so beautiful with its varieties, is not really a source of joy, love, light, certainty, peace or help for pain for the speaker. This chaotic artificial world doesn’t induce much hope for him.
35 – 37 - Now the speaker compares this world to a dark place where we are completely unaware of what we are doing. We are in a confused struggle as if ignorant soldiers are fighting with each other in the darkness. This is Matthew Arnold’s assessment of the morally corrupted modern world full of vanity.
Short Summary:
Stanza 1 deals with the speaker's initial experience of the beach, which shifts from calmness to disquiet brought on by the sound of the moving pebbles.
Stanza 2 introduces Sophocles, as the speaker imagines ancient Greece and
believes that the tragic playwright must also have experienced the same sort of
pain and doubt that the speaker is experiencing now.
Stanza 3 develops the specific reason why the speaker hears such sadness
in the sound of the sea: the loss of faith.
And stanza 4, finally, tries - without
entirely succeeding - to build a defense against the future faithless world by
professing the value of authentic love.
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