"Dover Beach", a poem by Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold’s (1822-88) major contribution to English literature was as a prose writer, but in his early years he wrote a considerable quantity of poetry, most of it not being particularly good. However, with “Dover Beach” he produced one of the greatest poems of the 19th century, and it deserves its place in popular acclaim.

The setting of Dover Beach

The poet and his female companion are staying overnight at Dover, probably ready to embark for France the following day. The companion is almost certainly his wife, Frances Lucy (known as Flu), and it is possible that they are setting off on their honeymoon. They were married on 10th June 1851, and the poem was possibly composed at around that time. There is however some debate as to whether the whole poem was written at the same time, and it is possible that the final stanza, which does not mention the sea, could have preceded the rest of the poem.

It is also interesting to speculate whether they were staying at the Royal Ship Hotel, which overlooked Dover harbour at the foot of the cliffs, and at which Charles Dickens is known to have stayed in 1856, using the setting for a scene in “A Tale of Two Cities”.

The most important thing about this poem is that it is built around a noise. This is the particular sound made by waves as they retreat down a shingle beach. The breaking wave crashes ashore and throws stones up the bank. However, as the water falls back it takes many of the pebbles with it, and they make a characteristic rumbling sound as they are knocked against each other.

First stanza

One can easily imagine the poet standing by the open window on a warm summer night, looking out to sea and hearing the “grating roar” from only a few yards away, as described in the opening stanza of the poem:

“The sea is calm to-night.

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.”

Other things to note in this stanza are the references to moonlight and calmness, the call to his wife to join him and listen, and the final line, which associates the situation with “eternal sadness”.

The poem moves with a steady and weighty rallentando, with the opening lines recording a series of particular items suggestive of the serenity, poise and stability which Arnold desires for himself.

The poem is written in something approaching free verse, with only a rudimentary rhyme scheme and great metrical freedom. However, the contrast between the short, sharp, “the waves draw back, and fling…” and the more measured “with tremulous cadence slow” works perfectly as a description of wave action on a shingle beach.

Second stanza

“Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, 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.”

It is not surprising that Arnold should bring in a classical reference, given his educational background as the son of Dr Arnold of Rugby School and his fluency in Greek and Latin.

He does two things here. He places his experience of hearing the waves into a universal context, and he justifies his own “eternal sadness” by reference to Sophocles’s observation of the link to “human misery”. There is also a note of regret in that it is his location that is “distant”, rather than the Aegean. The poet sees his true place as being by another sea and in another time.

Third stanza

Arnold now gets down to the real purpose of the poem:

“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.”

For Arnold, the metaphor of the sea and the moon at his window points to his regret at “Faith” now being assailed by doubt in an England that has become industrialized, questioning and Darwinian (although “The Origin of Species” had not yet been published). For anyone born and bred in the British Isles, the sea is a great comfort, having kept invaders at bay since 1066, and the certainties of religion have the same effect for the faithful.

Arnold becomes passionate in the last five haunting lines of the stanza, which comprise a single sentence. The “grating roar of pebbles” has become a “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”. The main verb, “hear”, comes early, with the rest of the sentence falling away in keeping with the ebb of the tide and of religious faith.

Fourth stanza

Arnold could have ended the poem at this point, but he does not. Had he done so, the poem would have said something profound and moving about the world’s loss of faith, but been somewhat impersonal. In the second and third stanzas we are only aware of a single presence (except perhaps for “we” in the second stanza), but now Flu is brought right back into the scene:

“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.”

Suddenly this has become a love poem. Whatever else may be going wrong with the world, in which the dream and the reality are very different from each other, the poet and his wife still have each other. Since the loss of religious faith makes it impossible to believe that the universe is adjusted to human needs, human love must supply the values that are otherwise absent. The lovers must support each other if they are to live in the modern world without disaster.

This stanza has something that the third one does not, namely a rhyme pattern (ABBACDDCC). Through love, order can be brought out of chaos. A world without faith is a frightening place, and, without light, armies will fight not knowing who is friend or foe.

“Dover Beach” is a powerful and disturbing poem that manages to evoke both pessimism on the global level and optimism as a personal statement of love. The fact that it was not published until 1867 seems to be evidence that it was the personal message by which Arnold set greater store.