‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 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. 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; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
What we love about this passage…
‘Dover Beach’ is one of the best-known English poems. After the first image of a ‘calm,’ ‘glimmering’ sea full of promise, the poem takes a turn to melancholia—misery, struggle, and war—brought on by the ebbing tide of faith, before suggesting that redemption may come in the form of love and connection to others.
In addition to encapsulating the deepest anxieties of modernizing nineteenth-century England, the poem elegantly reflects on the hazy borders of time, memory, and subjectivity. Just the sight of the horizon brings the speaker to the past—the classical philosopher Sophocles on the Aegean sea—and the unknown, ever-shifting future.
About the Author
Matthew Arnold (1822-88) was one of the foremost poets, writers, and reformers of the Victorian era. He started his career as a school inspector, a position that allowed him to witness the great changes taking place across England in the nineteenth century. His best-known works, such as the poem ‘Dover Beach’ (1867) and the essay Culture and Anarchy, expressed his apprehensions about industrial modernity and the need for societies to take stock of and cherish—in his words—‘the best which has been thought and said.’
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