Analysis on the Poem 'Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold

“The Beach is written in the style of a free verse poem consisting of two stanzas, the first one having nineteen lines and the second having twelve. The lines vary significantly in length and feature a large amount of enjambment which stretches over fur lines in some cases. The mood and atmosphere of the poem is extremely relaxed and promotes the reader to feel nostalgic about the last time they themselves visited the beach.

The tone of despair and loneliness is carried on to the proceeding stanzas, and is more evident in the last two. By saying that “Water limpid as the solitudes that flee

In the romantic era, British authors and poets focused on nature and its influence. Two of those poets, Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, wrote many pieces on the beauty of nature and their personal experiences with the beaches of England. In “Far on the sands” and “It is a beauteous evening,” Smith and Wordsworth describe their respective experiences on the shore at sunset. Both authors use structure, theme, allusions, and imagery to effectively convey their perceptions of nature. While the sonnets share a setting and the topics of nature and tranquility, Smith’s has a focus on introspection and Wordsworth’s is centered around religion. These have different focuses which achieve different effects on the reader.

He uses this imagery in this poem to emphasis this dark place in which he now lives. Deep sea can be a cold and scary place. This would capture a human experience because deep in the sea would be a dark and lonely which is something a human can feel and relate to.

With every journey comes a destination which is dependent on the degree of the individual and their will to potentially better themselves. A journey offers travelers the opportunity to extend themselves physically, intellectually and emotionally as they respond to challenges. Ruby Moon by Matt Cameron is a contemporary fractured fairytale in the form of a play that explores the grim, Australian legend of the missing child. This text portrays real issues in an absurd representation which forces the reader on an imaginative journey as well as the characters in an inner journey to establish an identity. Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor is a distressing elegy about loss of life through war. Slessor’s sophisticated language, allows the responder to empathise and mourn the wastefulness of life in war while also to appreciate the commonality of human existence. This text highlights the concept of journeying of the soul from both the reader and the responder. Through the use of a variety of visual and written techniques, these texts portray the concept of an existential journey, the indefinite search for true self and true personal meaning in life. Deep loss of an individual or one others’ individuality triggers an existential crisis and without journeying imaginatively, the chance to create one’s purpose becomes absent.

Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach” does a great job at portraying what love is talked up to be. He starts the poem by saying, “The sea is calm tonight / The tide is full the moon lies fair / the cliffs of England stand / Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.” (1-2, 4-5.) giving off a peaceful and tranquil tone and adding on to that in the following lines of the stanza. Th importance of the setting of the poem is that it paints a beautiful landscape which gives breath to the idea

The first stanza of this poem compares human life to clouds and gives us an image of the evening’s sky. Shelly’s description of the clouds being “lost forever” as the night closes round tells the reader that everybody is lively and bright in the day but slowly disappear in the night. Every night someone disappears in their

With Bishop being familiar with the Nova Scotia coast, she really has a connection in the poem with the landscape and what is going on around her, which the reader can appreciate throughout the first couple of stanzas. The reader can identify this connection with the vivid use of imagery Bishop portrays. She starts out the poem describing the scenery and a little bit of the culture that has surrounded her for most of her years. Lines 1 – 4 cite, “From narrow provinces /of fish and bread and tea, / home of the long tides/ where the bay leaves the sea.” With these particular lines, Bishop creates a soothing and comfortable image and tone. She sets the mood of the poem by the repetitive syntactical use of language. Bishop does a great job with this by having the reader appreciate what she is seeing and displaying a meaning of what is behind these “long tides” and the bay.

The last two lines act as a slap in the face. Every element works toward death, and the speaker almost slips into eternal rest. One can see him, putting the

Dover Beach intrigued me as soon as I read the title. I have a great love of beaches, so I feel a connection with the speaker as he or she stands on the cliffs of Dover, looking out at the sea and reflecting on life. Arnold successfully captures the mystical beauty of the ocean as it echoes human existence and the struggles of life. The moods of the speaker throughout the poem change dramatically as do the moods of the sea. The irregular, unordered rhyme is representative of these inharmonious moods and struggles. In this case, the speaker seems to be struggling with the relationship with his or her partner.

Again, the author selects a new set of imagery, such as stars, moon, sun, ocean, and wood to remind of the heaven in which the speaker used to live, and then to sweep it off right away. The last statement “For nothing now can ever come to any good” (16) finally reinforces the speaker’s loss and unhappiness. In loneliness, the speaker’s love becomes fiercer and more truthful. It is the fierceness and truthfulness that lead the speaker to the last stair of hopelessness. The end of the poem is also the hopeless end of the speaker’s life because of “nothing …good.”

This poem is unique and more patently autobiographic unlike other romantic poems that were written during his era in the early 18th century by other fellow writers. Byron’s poem is entirely focused on the beauty and the fascination that he endures with the ocean. The title of the poem indicates the subject of the poem; it also has the first literary device that is seen throughout this poem. The word apostrophe is when the writer speaks to the ocean as if it can hear and respond. As a child Byron becomes aware of realities imperfections but the skepticism of his disillusionment coexisted with a lifelong propensity to seek ideal perfection in all of life experiences (Marchand). In the first stanza Byron expresses and underlines the feelings, fascination and his overwhelming love that he endures with the ocean.

Indeed, this sound of sadness is an ancient entity since Sophocles long ago/ Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought/ Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow/ Of human misery. The eternal note of sadness has been important to writers and philosophers throughout time. Arnold believed this same sound existed in all the seas around the world. The waves, sounding of despair, also symbolize the curtailment of religious values. In stanza three the speaker describes the diminishing faith of religion in England: The Sea of Faith/ Was once, too, at the full, and round earths shore/ Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. At one point Englands faith was like a high tide. It was similar to a belt being placed around the world, holding it together. During this time people believed in their religion, thus leading England into a state of order and tranquility. However, now the speaker only feels a troubled sense of blankness: 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. This passage emphasizes a mood of uncertainty and alienation in the world. In stanza four, the speaker ends on a note of melancholy. Love is offered as a possible solace from the sadness of the world, but quickly this idea is abandoned for the world,

The appearance of Dover Beach at this time is only of what the human senses can envision. The speakers looks beneath the surface of Dover Beach and unveils the true nature of the sea. When Arnold stops to really listen to the sea, “he only hears the sea’s melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” (9). Arnold justifies the theory that things are not always what they appear to be. The world only ‘seems’ to be beautiful, but is ‘really’ a place of conflict, chaos and dangerous misunderstandings.

In the poem "Dover Beach",witten in 1867 Matthew Arnold creates the mood of the poem through the usage of different types of imagery. He uses a dramatic plot in the form of a soliloquy. Arnold also uses descriptive adjectives, similes and metaphors to create the mood. Through the use of these literary elements, Arnold portrays the man standing before the window pondering the sound of the pebbles tossing in the waves as representation of human suffering. The man arrives at the vision of humanity being helpless against nature. Arnold creates the mood by suggesting mental pictures, actions, sights and sounds the man sees. Some examples are "folds of a bright girdle furled", "lie before us like a land of dreams"