Dover Beach

First published in 1867 in Matthew Arnold’s collection New Poems, “Dover Beach” is, technically, a Victorian-era poem, but it’s also regarded by many critics as one of the first Modernist poems ever written. The poem is also a modern-day lyric, meaning it contains personal emotions from a first-person speaker. This focus on the “I” also connects “Dover Beach” to the Modernist movement in poetry (see Contextual Analysis for more on Modernism).

At the beginning of the poem, the speaker is standing at a window on the cliffs above Dover Beach. He calls his lover over to the window and tells her to listen to the sounds of ocean waves dragging pebbles up and down the beach. Then he says that the sounds they’re listening to “bring / [t]he eternal note of sadness in” (Lines 13-14).

Next, the speaker compares the “grating roar” (Line 9) of the waves scraping pebbles across the beach to the tragedies of Sophocles (Lines 15-20) and “The Sea of Faith” receding from the world (Lines 21-28). The speaker concludes by telling his lover that romantic fidelity is the only source of truth they can possibly find in modern life, because the world

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 (Lines 33-37).

Though this guide will offer a more in-depth summary and analysis later, it’s worthwhile to highlight early on just how much the poem’s themes and techniques provide a critical overview for Arnold’s own unique place in history. Arnold wrote “Dover Beach” at a time of rapid industrialization in England. Industrialization meant agrarian rhythms no longer ordered day-to-day existence. People increasingly felt their Christian faith weakening, meaning that religious faith no longer oriented them psychically. The final lines of “Dover Beach” reflect a disenchantment with the modern world, a disenchantment that only increased during the 20th century. As a result, some critics believe that, even though it was written in 1867, “Dover Beach” should be discussed with the Modernist poets instead of the Victorian poets.

As well as the style (Victorian or Modernist), “Dover Beach” is formally complex. It is part sonnet, part dramatic monologue, part formal, and part free verse poem. All of these apparent discrepancies lend “Dover Beach” an air of change, a change that strikes the speaker as troubling and, in its fluctuations, indicative of a future doom that only love can navigate.

Poet Biography

Arnold was born in England in 1822 in a town along the River Thames. He died in England in 1888. Alexandrina Victoria, who later became Queen Victoria, was born three years before Arnold in 1819, became Queen of England in 1837, and reigned until her death in 1901. Thus, Arnold lived and wrote squarely in the Victorian era.

Arnold’s father, Dr. Thomas Arnold, was both a clergyman and the headmaster of the Rugby school. Matthew Arnold was educated first at Rugby, then at Oxford.

He became an inspector of schools in 1851, a job he held for the next 30 years. He also got married in 1851. On his honeymoon, he and his wife went to Dover, so that they could cross the English Channel there (at its narrowest point) and visit France.

By 1852, Arnold had published and withdrawn two books of poetry. Neither of these books received much attention. In 1853, he published Poems and did not withdraw it. In 1855, he published Poems, Second Series. He was made a professor of poetry at Oxford (a part-time position) in 1857 (Kunitz, Stanley. “Matthew Arnold: A Biography.” Victorian Web).

In 1867, Arnold published New Poems, which included “Dover Beach” and “Thyrsis,” two of his most well-known verses. This volume also included “Rugby Chapel,” an elegy Arnold wrote for his father, and a section with 14 traditional sonnets (Arnold, Matthew. New Poems. Google Books).

Poem Text

The sea is calm tonight.

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.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, 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 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.

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.

Arnold, Matthew. “Dover Beach.” 1867. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The title gives readers the setting: Dover Beach. The White Cliffs of Dover are 300 feet high in some places and loom above the rocky, pebbly beaches on the southeast coast of England. Only a narrow channel of water separates Dover Beach from France, and on clear days it is possible to glimpse the French coast from the Dover cliffs. On his honeymoon, Arnold and his wife took a ferry from Dover to France. Some critics say the poem began with this trip, others point out that Arnold visited Dover alone shortly before he was married, and the poem could just as easily have started on that trip.

Whatever its origin, the poem begins at night with the speaker standing at a window on the cliffs above Dover Beach. The opening lines describe the scene outside the window. The sea is tranquil. The tide is high. The reflection of the moon glistens on the water’s surface along the narrow passageway, or straits, between England and France. The surrounding English cliffs are described as “[g]limmering and vast” above the inlet below (Line 5). Then the speaker calls his lover to the window: “Come to the window, sweet is the night-air” (Line 6).

It appears his lover complies, because next the speaker instructs her to listen: “Listen! you hear the grating roar” (Line 9). The “roar” is made by waves dragging pebbles back and forth on the beach (Lines 9-10). Even on a calm night, the waves are unrelenting, so this sound and the motion of the pebbles across the shoreline is a constant back-and-forth: “Begin, and cease, and then again begin” (Line 12). Since the sea is relatively calm, the waves aren’t large, and the pebbles aren’t being thrown at full force or with great speed. Rather, the waves are described as wavering and uncertain, or “tremulous,” and their rhythm, or “cadence,” is slow (Line 13). The speaker concludes that the slow-but-unrelenting sound of the waves scraping the beach is mournful and never-ending. The waves “bring / [t]he eternal note of sadness in” (Lines 13-14).

Eternal sadness reminds the speaker of Sophocles, the ancient Greek author of the tragedy Oedipus Rex. He claims that Sophocles heard the same sound the speaker and his lover are hearing tonight, just along the Aegean sea, instead of the English coast. This sound, the speaker claims, inspired in Sophocles a thought: “the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery” (Lines 17-18). The speaker claims that the sound of the sea also brings a “thought” to him and his lover, even though they are in a different location (north of Greece where Sophocles was).

Looking and listening to the sea brings to the speaker’s mind “The Sea of Faith” (Line 21), which he says once was “full, and round the earth’s shore” like “a bright girdle” (Lines 22-23). In other words, religious faith used to clasp the earth tightly and make it seem more attractive, just like girdles clasp women’s bodies. The speaker, however, has lost his faith. Thus, it seems to him the “Sea of Faith” (Line 21) is leaving:

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 (Lines 24-28).

The speaker compares the “Sea of Faith” to a girdle around the world, so without it the land is “naked” (Line 28).

This leads the speaker to call for his lover to be faithful to him: “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” (Lines 29-30). This is necessary because, although the world can seem deceptively beautiful, it is in fact faithless and cruel. The world, he writes, “Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain” (Lines 33-34). At this window high up on a seaside cliff, he tells his lover that they might as well be on a flat plain where “confused” and “ignorant” armies are fighting in the dark (Lines 36-37).