Dover Beach
By: Mathew Arnold
Lecture 17
Victorian Poetry
• Victorian period describes the events in the age of
Queen Victoria’s reign of 1837-1901.
• Influence of Romantics still strong, though Victorian
poetry reacted against subjectivity.
• Victorian poetry is heroic, sentimental and nostalgic.
• Most enduring feature of Victorian poetry is dramatic
monologue, though short lyrics and sonnets were
also popular.
• Simplicity of language was adhered to.
• Poetry is Pictorial: employs details to create a visual
image to represent emotion.
• Use of alliteration for sound effect etc. to create
effect and illustrate meaning e.g. mellowness of
Tennyson and roughness of Browning
• Experimentation with narrative
• Depiction of inner workings of the mind, the
psychology of the characters
• Spiritual contemplation and philosophical inquiries
are common with the Victorian poets.
Poets of Early Victorian Period
• Mathew Arnold, Alfred Tennyson and Robert
Browning
• Both imbued with the spirit of romanticism with
difference.
• Tennyson was inspired by Byron and Keats; Browning
with Shelley.
• Romanticism was blended with the skepticism of the
age or the great debate between religion and
science.
Mathew Arnold (1822-88)
• A poet , a critic and an educator
• Most of his poetry gives expression to the conflict of
the age – between faith and scepticism – and is
therefore melancholic.
• He was disappointed with lack of faith in the society
(as the result of scientific rationalism & publication of
Darwin’s work “Origin of Species”)
• He longed for primitive faith, wholeness, simplicity
and happiness.
• He is reflective and philosophical in his poems.
• He saw “anarchy” in the society as the result of
scientific rationalism & intellectualism
• In such confusion, he assigns a sacred & semireligious status to poetry:
“More and more mankind will discover that we have
to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console
us, to sustain us.” or, that poetry is
“the best that has been said and thought in the
world.”
• For Arnold poetry has both aesthetic and
instructional function.
• The best poetry for Arnold is one that embodies
Hellenism or Greek culture.
• He looks for “high seriousness” in poetry, meaning
the combination of deep insight and perfect form,
such that was found in the poetry of Homer, Dante
and Shakespeare.
• His poetry is plain and prosaic.
About the poem
• Wrote the poem during or shortly after a visit made
to Dover region of southeastern England, in 1851.
• The town of Dover is closer to France than any other
port in England.
• The Strait of England separates the town from the
coast of France.
• There are shifting points of views in narration.
• Poem has the mournful tone of an elegy and the
intensity of a dramatic monologue.
• Central message is the loss of faith in the Victorian
society as the result of scientific postulates, such as
the evolutionary theory of English physician Erasmus
Darwin and French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamark.
• He was a believer in God and religion but also
supported an overhauling of religious thinking: in
God and Bible he wrote, “ at the present moment
two things about Christianity religion must surely be
clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that
men cannot do without it; the other, they cannot do
with it as it is.”
Analysis of the Poem
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;-Gives description of the beach and the night.
Scene of peace and calm.
A strait is narrow waterway that connects two larger
bodies of water, or a channel of water.
on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
dying light on the coast of France is a reminder of the
dying light of faith.
Bay: large body of water enclosed by land with a wide
mouth allowing access to sea.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Sea waves hitting the rocks and cliffs are splashing
water in shower in every direction.
The poet enjoying the peace and quite of the night but
his peace of mind is disturbed by troubling thoughts.
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Auditory imagery is significant here: sound of pebbles
Men’s minds are like pebbles on the shore, that are
swayed between belief and disbelief, between faith
and scepticism.
Grating roar: sound of pebbles rubbing against each
other.
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
sound and continuous movement of the waves moving
backwards and forwards.
Tremulous cadence: rhythmic motion of the waves at
regular interval.
The full sea tide & its music remind him of sad truths of
their world.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the {AE}gean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery.
Sophocles: 5th C Gk dramatist, writing about fate and will of
gods
Aegean: sea or bay in Mediterranean Sea between Greece
and Turkey
Ebb and flow of human misery is compared to the tides of
the sea – man’s fortunes are shifting like tides
we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The poet is distant in time and space from Sophocles
but he experiences the same emotions.
He too is disturbed by the thoughts of human misery
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
Sea of Faith: uses a grand simile to explain the gradual
loss of man’s faith in religion – a sea surrounding the
world.
Girdle: long belt
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.
withdrawing waves symbolize loss of faith.
Breath of night-wind: like the influence of secular
thinking
Naked shingles : the pebbles on the shore, or faith
retreating from the lives of people.
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;
Certitude: confidence and hope.
Theme of appearance and reality of the Victorian
world.
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Gives a picture of the Victorian world: a dark plain
where people are struggling for their materialistic
ambitions like armies fighting at night without
knowing who and why they are fighting.
Analysis/Themes
• The poem is held together by unity of emotions and
sentiments, although there is no connection
between the first and the second parts.
• Describes the effects of industrialization of the 19th C
England; Victorian world was changing with the
growth of science and technology.
• Also condemns the loss of faith, religion and the
meaning of life resulting from secular thinking.