[ephemeral]

Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach has haunted me ever since my first reading - at university, of course. It likely is my all-time favorite poem -- if measured by sheer number of re-reads. But it is NOT the greatest poem ever written; far from it, in fact, as some of its 'insights' are rather juvenile. But still the poem stays with me over the decades, still it haunts me; and each time I read it, I discover something more.

Dover Beach has the mournful tone of an elegy and the personal intensity of a dramatic monologue, perhaps another reason it speaks to me, as though Arnold addresses me, even though he really addresses his wife. (Remember when reading poetry to read to punctuation marks, rarely line or stanza breaks.)

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
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-blanch'd 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 Aegean, 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 furl'd.
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.

In Matthew Arnold’s world of the mid-1800's, the pillar of faith that supported society was perceived as crumbling under the weight of advances in science; consequently, the existence of God and the whole Christian scheme of things were cast in doubt. Arnold lamented this change via his often meditative and rhetorical poems that typically wrestle with problems of physical, psychological, and spiritual isolation. Dover Beach is a singular example, for it links that problem of isolation with what Arnold saw as the dwindling faith of his time, a motif he used frequently, especially in this poem, symbolized by...

the light
Gleams and is gone

This clause foreshadows the message of later lines--that the light of faith in God and religion, once strong, now flickers.

grating roar
Of pebbles

refers to the conflict between the sea and the land and, symbolically, between long-held religious beliefs and the secular challenges against them

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full

There was a time when faith in God was strong and comforting. This faith wrapped itself around us, protecting us from doubt and despair, as the sea wraps itself around the continents and islands of the world. Now, however, the sea of faith has become a sea of doubt. Science challenges the precepts of theology and religion; human misery makes people feel abandoned, lonely. People place their faith in material things.

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

The world has become a selfish, cynical, amoral, materialistic place, with hatred and pain - and no guiding light. Arnold, in essence, says let us - he and his wife, he and his reader, he and me, each of us to another - at least be true to each other in our marriage, in our moral standards, in the way we think; for the world will not be true to us. Although the world presents itself to us as a dreamland, it is a sham. It offers nothing to ease our journey through life.

Which offers another reason why Dover Beach strikes a responsive chord in me, a person who has struggled with faith (Faith) my entire life. I find my pursuit of material wealth often leaves me empty, each new gain or success invoking a sort of post-partum depression. Religion never worked for me, but with no center, I feel untethered, unmoored, adrift. Reading works of beauty such as Dover Beach help provide me some form of center, however small or seemingly inconsequential. And sometimes answers, of a sort.

[zackddog]

Thank you

I like this one. You could feel the chilly melancholy of the poem, the feeling of being lost, uncertain. You may not agree with all that he has to say about the world, but art is not about agreeing, its about feeling, about painting the picture of the world you see, or just one of the worlds your imagination lets you see, and Matthew paints his drear world well.

I also like that the poems you've put so far are accessible. I've never enjoyed highly codified poetry. Here, I may have not about the circumstances surrounding his life, but I've felt that once there was some kind of faith, or purpose, in his life, something that comforted him that isn't there anymore, that now only sadness, purposelessness and dejection ruled his world. Thank you for your work

I've also never found myself in religion, becoming a staunch atheist at the tender age of 7 (circa), but then I found what people would call spirituality, men like Osho Rajneesh or Jiddu Krishnamurti which don't affiliate themselves with any kind of religion, but have experienced life in a different way and wanted to share it with us, so that perhaps we could experience it as well. I usually never give advice like this, especially to strangers, but somehow I felt compelled here, and if you're interested, try the work of these men, perhaps starting with Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, which is where I started, and which seems to me like the best starting point (although I haven't read many books on the subject; I feel its more important to experience, than to gather knowledge, at least when it comes to this).

PS: if you have some of Matthew's work, would you post here on mobilism? I would like to read him once

[ephemeral]

I like this one. You could feel the chilly melancholy of the poem, the feeling of being lost, uncertain. You may not agree with all that he has to say about the world, but art is not about agreeing, its about feeling, about painting the picture of the world you see, or just one of the worlds your imagination lets you see, and Matthew paints his drear world well.

I also like that the poems you've put so far are accessible. I've never enjoyed highly codified poetry. Here, I may have not about the circumstances surrounding his life, but I've felt that once there was some kind of faith, or purpose, in his life, something that comforted him that isn't there anymore, that now only sadness, purposelessness and dejection ruled his world. Thank you for your work

I've also never found myself in religion, becoming a staunch atheist at the tender age of 7 (circa), but then I found what people would call spirituality, men like Osho Rajneesh or Jiddu Krishnamurti which don't affiliate themselves with any kind of religion, but have experienced life in a different way and wanted to share it with us, so that perhaps we could experience it as well. I usually never give advice like this, especially to strangers, but somehow I felt compelled here, and if you're interested, try the work of these men, perhaps starting with Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, which is where I started, and which seems to me like the best starting point (although I haven't read many books on the subject; I feel its more important to experience, than to gather knowledge, at least when it comes to this).

Matthew Arnold never really lost his faith; his essays and poems were about mending the rent in the fabric between the religious and secular worlds that he feared would cause other people to lose their way. Dover Beach, I believe, is Arnold's best effort in that objective.

I agree with you wholeheartedly re your comment "art is not about agreeing." The best artists seek to open a discussion with you, not persuade you of their perceptions of the universe. An interesting conversation, which makes for the best poetry, I believe. The poet shares his or her view of whatever, but something universal - loneliness, love, loss, etc - which has different resolutions for each person (reader). One common or shared problem, 6 billion different outcomes. The poet thus must say enough for your mind to get to work, and then it (you) responds. You might disagree with this or that aspect, but you feel its truth. The interesting thing is you cannot speak to the poet, just as he or she does not speak to you... except he does. (As Dover Beach does for me.) This concurrent but always mono-directional two-way conversation is what I love about the humanities.

Hmm, perhaps your comment instructs me as to which poem will be #3 in the series...

Thank you for your comments.

[decay1973]

I just struck up a mobilism friendship with a fellow sharer, enabler, pirate; and somehow proving that we're not all thugs, we came together through a shared love of Robert Lowell, W.H. Auden, and Paul Celan. How did that conversation even start? you ask. Well, don't. It just did.

So on a hunch that there were other like minds lurking in this wonderful community, I searched around and found myself here in this forum, randomly opened the We Like Poetry #2 thread (who knows why I didn't start at #1) and was bowled over, not only by the choice of poem, but the comments, and the responses...

I'm working right now, so I can't really respond with the desired focus but, typically perhaps of a pirate, I'll respond with someone else's words - poet Anthony Hecht who I met many years ago and found to be thoroughly charming...

The Dover Bitch

by Anthony Hecht

A Criticism of Life: for Andrews Wanning

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.

So funny! The girl "addressed / As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort"! Haha!!

Haha, it is funny

Though I'm not sure I understand the "But you mustn't judge..." part till the end. He says she's ok, she's running after fat dependable men and he brings her a bottle of Amorous Night? Is he flirting with her? Or is there some other joke I don't see?