Dover Beach Poem Summary and Analysis

Dover Beach Summary

This article deals with the poem Dover Beach Summary and analysis. The poet is Matthew Arnold. It represents the clash between science and religion. This poem opens on a beautiful naturalistic scene. The poet (speaker) stands on the cliffs of Dover Beach. He is gazing out at the majesty of the beauty of nature. Sadness is creeping in, and the poet is reminding about how the recent scientific discoveries have forever changed the human values with the relation to nature. In this way, he brings science and faith in conflict. The poem presents all the theology and scientific theory with the message that all such things in the world can’t make life meaningful if there is no love.

Dover Beach Summary in short

This article explains the Dover Beach Summary by Matthew Arnold. It presents the Dover Beach Summary in a brief way. The timeline of the Dover Beach Summary is of England during the early 19th century. One night, the speaker sits with a woman inside the house and he is looking out over the English Channel near the town of Dover. Both see the lights on the coast of France, which is almost twenty miles away. Sea is quiet and calm.

When the light over on the side of France, the speaker focuses on the English side, which still remains tranquil. He is making a trade-off between visual imagery and aural imagery. He describes the “grating roar” of the pebbles which was pulled out by the waves and calls the music of the world as an eternal note of sadness.

Further, the speaker flashes back to ancient Greece, where Sophocles heard this type of sound on the Aegean Sea. Then he introduces the poem’s main metaphor and suggests that faith is fading from the society as the tide is from the shore. The speaker expresses this downfall of the faith through melancholy diction.

In the last stanza, the speaker directly addresses his beloved, who is sitting next to him. He is saying to her that they always be true to one another and to the world that is laid out before them. However, the speaker straight forward warns that the world’s beauty is only an illusion. This is due to the fact that a battlefield full of people fighting in the absolute darkness.

Analysis of the poem

Through this poem “Dover Beach”, speaker manages to comment on his most recurring themes. Its message is that the world’s mystery has declined with the rise in modernity. But, this decline is painted as particularly uncertain, dark, and volatile.

The poem is particularly powerful due to its romantic streak having almost no tinge of the religious. Even he speaks about the Sea of Faith without linking it to any deity or heaven. This word “faith” has a definite humanist tinge here.

It is no accident that the sight which is inspiring is the untouched nature, and this is almost completely absent from any human involvement. Here, what the poet is expressing, is an innate quality, a natural drive towards beauty.

He explores the contradiction through the poem’s most famous stanza. This stanza compares his experience to that of Sophocles. It reveals the darker potential covered under the beautiful illusion. Actually natural beauty is reminding us about human misery. This is because we can find this beauty, but we can never quite transcend our limited natures to reach it. These two responses are not mutually exclusive.

This type of dual experience between the celebration and lament for humanity is often possible for Arnold. Ironically, the tumult of nature is nothing compared to the tumult of this era of life. It frightens the speaker, to beg to his lover to stay true to him. He worries that this chaos of the modern world will change her too.

The poem epitomizes some kind of poetic experience, through which the poet focuses on a single moment in order to discover the profound depths. To accomplish the end, the poem uses many imagery and sensory information in his poem. It begins with the visual depictions like a calm sea, fair moon, and the lights in France across the Channel. The first stanza is switching from visual to auditory descriptions like the grating roar and tremulous cadence slow.

This poem is intelligently and sensibly employing many enjambments which is a popular poetic technique. It is also very clear that Arnold does not wish to create a pretty picture meant for the reflection. On the other way, the beautiful sights are used significantly due to the fear and anxiety which inspires the speaker. Thus the poem so wonderfully straddles the line between the poetic reflection and uncertainty. Therefore this poem has remained a well-loved piece throughout the centuries.