Dover Beach

- Matthew Arnold

Dover Beach is a lyric poem and dramatic monologue written by English poet
Matthew Arnold in 1851. The poem is placed in the shoreline of a ferry port in
Dover, Kent, France and the Strait of Dover, England. That is where Arnold goes
with his wife, who is also mentioned in the poem, for his honeymoon. The poem,
through describing the beach and the channel, talks about human apathy and
misery.

The poem starts by a description of the English Channel, the water body that
separates England from France. He says that the environment is peaceful: there
is a high tide with a beautiful moon. The light on French coast glimmer and
fade, while the English cliffs stand bold over the bay. He invites a listener, his
wife, to sit by the window, see what he is seeing and feel the sweet night air.
The poet then senses something very wrong, describing the spray where the sea
meets the moonlit land. This conscience of the sadness continues for the rest of
the poem. He instructs his wife to listen to the sound of the pebbles as the
waves shift them up and down. He notes this rhythm to be eternally sad.

The poet now stops talking about the beauty of his environment and instead
talks about human sadness and apathy. He remembers Greek playwright
Sophocles who also wrote about the sadness he heard on the river Ægean. The
poet tells about how he the sound of the tide brought the thought of human
misery into the playwrights mind. Now the poet had another thought that came
with the sea. Explaining it, the poet describes religious faith to be a sea all
around the earth. But now, all the poet can hear is its melancholy roars as it
withdraws. As it retreats, it is lost to the wind, leaving the world as a naked
barren land.

The poet finally addresses his wife as ‘love’, stating that they should be true to
one another. This is because despite its beauty and variety, the world has no
love or clarity to offer, nor can it provide peace and happiness. The poet then
compares the world to be a dark scene, where battles between unknown
‘ignorant’ armies continue in the night.

Md. Mahmud Muntasir