DOVER BEACH EXPLAINED: Fun with Poetry [Analysis & Review of Matthew Arnold's Poem "Dover Beach"]

Описание: #poetrytube #doverbeach

Need essay help for your poetry analysis of DOVER BEACH by Matthew Arnold? Well, if you love talking about poetry the way the do in DEAD POETS SOCIETY, you've come to the right place (although I'm not as funny or as brilliant as Robin Williams RIP).

Today, we are analyzing Matthew Arnold's most famous poem which is not only about Dover Beach (a place in England next to the Cliffs of Dover), it's also about the loss of faith.

Here's the poem:

"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

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.


Here's a brief but useful biography from "The Poetry Foundation":

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...


Here's a great podcast on "Victorian Pessimism," featuring Matthew Arnold's poem:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007...

Coming to Terms with "Dover Beach" (an essay from 1960s):

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23094128...