Dover Beach Analysis
By: Jimmy Perez, Gustavo Martinez, Omar Arceo, Gerardo Zamudio,
and Kevin Mayorga
Structure
 Dover Beach is a Short lyric poem by Matthew Arnold.
 He plays with the meter and the whole structure of the poem.
 He uses enjambment regularly through the poem.
 He uses alliteration within the first stanza; to-night: tide, full: fair, coast: cliffs, Gleams: gone.
 He uses this line for assonance "Begin, and cease, and then again begin,“
 His diction varies throughout the poem and changes from mainly mellow to angry.
 His syntax is adjusted to where his heavy descriptive or emotional words are right at the
end.
First Stanza
 There is enjambment in lines: two, three, and seven.
 “the moon lies fair Upon the straits”
 The water reflects the image of the moon; Here straits refers to the Strait of Dover which connects
the English Channel on the south to the North Sea on the north.
 “light Gleams and is gone”
 Here light represents the faith in God and religion. It was once strong, but is now flickering. So he is
losing his faith.
 There are also a couple metaphors, he is saying the night air is sweet. Which is saying that
the air is nice or feels nice.
 His mellow wording is used to illustrate seaside scenery.
Second Stanza
 Arnold uses personification in line 10 when he says: “of pebbles which the waves draw
back, and fling” He’s comparing the waves to a Person throwing rocks.
 “with tremulous cadence slow” he is saying the rocks are like a trembling rhythm.
 Arnold essentially challenges his faith and doubts it, all the while using the ocean
throughout the poem to show how religion may seem like a good thing but definitely has
its negative components
.
 He uses enjambment in lines nine and thirteen.
Third Stanza
 Arnold starts off this stanza by throwing in some allusions.
 He mentions:
 Sophocles: a Greek playwright known for writing Oedipus the King and Antigone
 Arnold alludes here to a passage in the ancient Greek play Antigone, by Sophocles, in which Sophocles
says the gods can visit ruin on people from one generation to the next, like a swelling tide driven by winds.
A bust of Sophocles himself
Third Stanza (cont.)
 He mentions:
 The Aegean: is the sea between Greece and Turkey. In the time of
Sophocles, the land occupied by Turkey was known as Anatolia.
 “into his mind the turbid ebb and flow of human misery” he is saying
how the sound of the sea is related to the way human misery comes
and goes.
 He also says how thoughts come and go and says as if you’re
hearing it from afar.
 There is enjambment on lines fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and
eighteen.
A map of where The Aegean is located.
Fourth Stanza
 The final stanza begins with an appeal to love, then moves on to a metaphor.
 “The Sea of Faith” is used as a metaphor describing that man was once filled with faith the
same way the sea is filled with water.
 Earth’s shore presents faith as a protection for mankind: it wrapped itself around us the
same way the seas are surrounding the earth’s shore.
 A girdle is anything that surrounds.
Fourth Stanza (cont.)
 “Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear”
 Here he describes the decrease of religion and belief in God.
 “and naked shingles of the world.”
 There he is saying that without faith (religious faith) mankind is “naked”
 There is enjambment on lines 21, 22, 24, 26, and 27.
 There is a simile on line23
Fourth Stanza (cont.)
 The metaphor with which the poem ends is most likely an allusion to a passage in
Thucydides's account of the Peloponnesian War. He describes an ancient battle that
occurred on a similar beach during the Athenian invasion of Sicily. The battle took place
at night; the attacking army became disoriented while fighting in the darkness and many
of their soldiers inadvertently killed each other.
 The Peloponnesian War was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the
Peloponnesian League led by Sparta
 In this stanza Arnold changes from his moody and mellow words to more angry and violent
language. He uses: roar and drear here.
Fourth Stanza (cont.)
This books speaks about history of the
Peloponnesian War offers a new evaluation of
the origins and causes of the conflict, based on
evidence produced by modern scholarship
and on a careful reconsideration of the
ancient texts.
An illustration of the war
Fifth Stanza
 “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
Annotate, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain”
 Here he is saying; On the surface the new industrialized world seems beautiful, but that is
merely a false appearance. When introducing the mechanics the world will no longer
have joy, love and light since mechanics cannot feel love and thus the love of humanity is
lost. Arnold says This will result in a lack of certitude, peace and help for pain in the future
which are essentials for humanity. This will be broken down by the introduction of
industrialization.
 Industrialization is changing his world view and impacting his way of life.
Fifth Stanza (cont.)
 It is compared and It is much like The Gilded Age where something that looks very nice is
not what it seems under.
 “and we are here as on a darkling plain”
 Here he is saying that the future ahead is dark.
 He finalizes the poem with some more enjambment on lines: 29, 30, and on 35.
 As you can see Matthew Arnold uses tons of enjambment throughout the whole poem.
 There are two similes on lines 31 and 25.
Matthew Arnold
Biography
Biography
 Matthew Arnold was born on December
24, 1822 in Laleham, Middlesex, England.
 He was a British poet and a cultural critic
who also worked as a school inspector.
 Arnold was elected Professor of Poetry at
Oxford in 1857. He was the first to deliver
his lectures in English rather than Latin.
 He was often called the third great
Victorian poet.
Biography
 There is a very interesting fact about Matthew Arnold and when he wrote this poem.
 Arnold was actually on his honeymoon in late June of 1851 when he wrote this.
 Because of this, it is said how the elements of the poem match up with dover beach itself.
 Sources point to the fact that a first draft of the poem the first 28 lines to be exact was
written on the back of a folded piece of paper Arnold had in his pocket!
 Although this may have been written in 1851 it was not published until 1867.
 He had six kids and eventually died at 65 in Liverpool, England in April 15, 1888.
Biography
More information on Dover >>
 Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home
county of Kent, in South East England. It faces
France across the narrowest part of the English
Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of
Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and northeast along the coastline from Dungeness and
Hastings. The town is the administrative center of
the Dover District and home of the Dover Calais
ferry through the Port of Dover.
Biography
Here is Dover Beach
10 Question Quiz
Please take out a slice of paper
Questions 1-10
1) What kind of poem is Dover Beach?
2) What is Arnold’s wording used to illustrate in the first stanza?
3) What does Arnold compare the waves to in line ten?
4) What does Arnold mention with his Allusions at the beginning of stanza 3?
5) What war is alluded to in the fourth stanza?
6) What is changing Arnold’s World view?
7) What can this situation be compared to?
8) Where exactly was Arnold born?
9) What was Arnold on when he wrote Dover Beach?
10)Where is Dover Beach?