What Is The Theme Of The Poem The Sea Is Dover Beach

Bruce Dawe is a highly revered and respected Australian who is regarded as one of the nation’s most influential poets. His poem “The Beach” is regarded has one of his best pieces of work and describes the goings on at one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks. His poem laments how important the beach is to the Australian population as he describes a number of different people from different walks of life enjoying it. Through the clever use of poetics devices and technique Dawe has crafted a poem to beautifully represent the Australian beach.

In the first stage of the poem, Morgan uses various poetic techniques to set the scene in the early evening by a Scottish loch. “The evening is perfect, my sisters. The loch lies silent, the air is still. The suns last rays linger over the water.” Morgan’s use of effective word choice creates a sense of peaceful tranquillity which is further developed with the alliteration

This contrast serves to communicate the scattered nature of our consciousness with the unity, elegance and fluidity of our subconscious. Furthermore, these drawn out sounds serve to also further the imagery of the tide’s “uninterrupted sweep” which is particularly effective in conveying the image of the wave rushing to envelope the shore, the word “uninterrupted” conveying this sense that the wave of inspiration is all smooth and relentless. This imagery is furthered by the 3 line-long segment, uninterrupted by punctuation. Yet, the central point made in these four lines is when the speaker states that “(he) heard” the waves. The description of the sea gives you a mental image, but Longfellow stresses upon the fact that the speaker only hears the tide, as this can be seen reflected in the title of the poem “The Sound of the Sea”. Hearing is an auditory action that allows one to be aware of the presence of the object through the sound, but not visually or physically grasp it. This suggests that inspiration is similar, in the sense that one can be aware of it but cannot consciously grasp, control or dominate it.

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

being severed by white sealers as they tried to save themselves from drowning. Figurative language and the overall tone of the poem illustrate the gloom and sadness surrounding the event: “shadows” and “darkness”. The landscape made up of “low hills”, ”the silver-grey wash of clouds” and “the steel-shining channel” reflects this dark mood. Reference to black crows, hectoring and descending, eyes being pecked, conjures images of cold-blooded, inhumane slaughter and “filaments of sinew”. Harwood’s typical use of the sonnet form is not employed here but experiments with rhyme and metre, in the form of free verse, evident in many of her later poems. Run-on lines and stanzas add to the narrative style of the poem, best read out loud. Although the

The poem I will be analysing today is Song of the Surf by Dan Ashlin. Ashlin is a born and bred Australian poet who writes modern poems. I believe that I have a strong connection with this poem because of how much I personally love the beach with the soft sand and the ferocious waves. In my opinion this poem isn’t just about the waves in the ocean, but how the ocean has its own life and story to tell.

The second most important image is the “surf-tormented shore”(line 13) as the speaker himself is standing next to one, and is unable to control the waves, thus becoming a metaphor again for time and life. The unpredictable quality of life and the chaos within his life demonstrate how little he can do to manipulate it as a very inactive verb “standing” is used. In the following lines as he loses the “golden sand” (line 15), the “pitiless waves”(line 22) represent life again as he’s asking God why he can’t do anything to stop these “pitiless waves”(line 22) that he knows are pitiless because they will not stop for him. This extended metaphor conveys the deeper meaning of life that passes by really fast and is just an illusion. These metaphors lead back to the main argument of life being nothing more than a dream, meaning the outer dream, which is what we see is life, and the inner dream, which is what we seem is our memories, and are all just dreams and illusions that we are unable to manipulate.

The third stanza which marks the middle of the poem begins, "The Ocean said, Come flow freely with me" with ten syllables written in pentameter accompanied by iambic, spondee and trochee syllables. A steady rhythm in meter is noted in the next four lines which declines to trimeter for all four lines. Line fourteen, "and the creatures in my seas." contains pyrrhic, trochee and anapestic syllables. The fifteenth line in trimeter, "Here your tears will disappear," contains for the first time in the poem, a dactyllic syllable accompanied by the iambic syllable. Line sixteen, "and your worries will cease." contains again the iambic syllable now accompanied by the pyrrhic syllable. The last line in the series of trimeter lines is line seventeen which states, "Be the element that I need.". concludes the metered pattern. In lines fourteen through seventeen the meter is measured the same, however there is a new element added to the syllables previously used in the beginning stanzas. The repeated trimeter is suggestive of familiar situation but the new syllable is

In this poem, we see the tone light and free, also much imagery. We see this immediately with the first line saying, the “afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight” (1). We immediately get a sense of a beautiful day, maybe even fall with the trees descriptions in the following line, “trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves” (2). Lowell shows such beautiful imagery throughout her poem especially in her first two stanzas, that when we read that they are in the middle of war in the third stanza, that it is slightly shocking. That there are “two little boys, lying flat on their faces” (7) and that they are, “carefully gathering red berries” (8). Here Lowell shows that it is still a beautiful day but the darker reality is that they are currently in a war. Then we start to see the poem more in a melancholy light. That these two little boys are picking berries to save for later, instead of enjoying it right now. However one day the boys wish that “there will be no more war” (10), and that then, they could in fact enjoy their berries, their afternoon and “turn it in my fingers”. In this poem, we clearly see the different tones throughout. Lowell shows us the light tone, then a more melancholy tone and then finally a hopeful tone.

These lines use enjambment for the effect of the lines flowing into each other to make it seems like the sea. The first half flows smoothly, as does the second half, except for the final word. The letter "S" is used in both halves to bring them together - to remind the readers of Islands Man closeness to the sea. The letter "H" ("head") is a break from the "S's" and therefore the rhythm is lost. The third line ("to the sound of blue surf") has alliteration of the letter "S". The sound of this letter is very much like that of the waves to remind the reader of the sea. To insure that this comes across to the readers there is emphasis on these letters. There is also an emphasis on the word "head" here to make the readers realize that it is only in Island Man's head, as he also realizes the truth.

The speaker feels that faith has disappeared and has separated her or him from the "ebb and flow" of life. This lost faith is compared to a sea that is very similar to the sea described in the first stanza. Words of lightness and beauty are used once more. The shore "lays like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd." There is a sense of encompassing joy in this phrase. This bright and joyful image is then contrasted by the last five lines of the stanza. "The Sea of Faith" has now retreated, like a tide withdraws from the shore. It is interesting to note the similarities and differences between the words of these five lines and the words from the first stanza. The sweet "night-air"becomes "the night-wind," and the cliffs that were once "glimmering and vast" are still vast, but only dreary edges. The sea that was "round" and "full" has now left the world empty and exposed. Similarly, the speaker has lost his faith and feels alone and vulnerable.

These three lines are perfect examples of the imagery within the poem because they contain an image of a river with its small peeks and waves trembling and glistening in the afternoon sun. All the while it equates the natural beauty of the river to the beauty that the young man sees in the youthful maiden.

Akin to the barrenness that Poe was obviously feeling at the time he wrote this poem, most detail is stripped away except for the most basic imagery of the sea, the shore and the heavens.

Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than

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,