Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

Dover Beach

When I saw the title of this poem by Matthew Arnold, I immediately thought of a song from World War I: There'll be blue birds over/the white cliffs of Dover/tomorrow, just you wait and see;/there'll be joy and laughter/and music after/tomorrow when the world is free." it's a sad song about war and longing for peace. And so is Dover Beach written 51 years earlier. In the first stanza the narrator tells us about the view he sees of England and France across the water. It is nighttime, and he describes the lights in France and the sweet smell of fresh sea air. He is viewing it from a window and calls his bride to come see too.

In the next stanza he describes the sound of the ocean moving to the shore, and introduces the idea of something less than perfect. He does this with images such as "the grating roar/of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling" and concludes that the motion brings an "eternal note of sadness in." Then he relates to this observation an allusion to Sophocles who said the movement of the Agean Sea sounded like "the turbid ebb and flow of human misery." The narrator says the sound and his remembrance of Sophocles reminds him of something else, which he describes as "a thought." The thought is that faith is diminishing. Perhaps he is referring to the change that was occurring during the 19th century as a result of science and its influence. Many people questioned their religious faith in the light of geological discoveries and ideas about evolution. Once everybody believed: "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 faith has greatly diminished and people are more worldly.