Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold

 

Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold, a Victorian poet as well a critic. He is the author of the poem ‘Dover Beach’. It was published in 1867. It is in the form of dramatic monologue, lamenting the loss of religious faith during the Victorian age. During the age because of the advancement of science, people lost their faith in religion. In this poem ‘Dover Beach’ Arnold says that true love is the only remedy for all problems. The ‘love’ addressed in the poem is Arnold’s newly married wife Frances Lucy Wightman with whom he visited Dover.

The Poet is the speaker, he is in his room. He begins to describe a calm and quiet sea out in the English Channel. The place is Dover Beach which is in a short distance from the French Coast. The poet asks his beloved to come to the window to watch the beautiful scene. The waves are ebbing and flowing. This to and fro movement produces crashing noise. The poet says that there is something sad about this sound. He feels that sadness is eternal. Even Sophocles, an ancient Greek tragedian might have heard this sound on the Aegean Sea. It reminded him of the emotions of ‘human misery’ and how they ‘ebb and flow’.

In this poem Arnold compares religion to sea. Once people had a strong faith but it dried up in the Victorian age because of the advancement of science. It is symbolically conveyed by the poet through the image of the sea withdrawing from the shore.

In the end of the poem, Arnold stresses the importance of love. Man had nothing to sustain him except woman’s love. He ends the poem with the cynical reflection that absence of religious enlightenment. People behave blindly and self – destructively like soldiers fighting in the dark and killing their own comrades by mistake. There is misunderstanding everywhere only sincere love can console distraught men and women.