Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Dover Beach

Dover Beach (published in 1867), is the most famous poem by Matthew Arnold and is generally considered one of the most important poems of the 19th century.^[1] It was first published in the collection New Poems. Dover Beach can refer to in Literature Dover Beach, is the most famous 1867 poem by Matthew Arnold . ... Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ... The original Wikisource logo. ... // Matthew Arnold, New Poems, including Dover Beach Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark Ralph Waldo Emerson, May-Day Algernon Charles Swinburne, Song of Italy Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translates Dantes Divine Comedy Ernest Christopher Dowson Lionel Pigot Johnson Henry Lawson (Australia) George William Russell (Æ; Ireland) David McKee Wright (New... Matthew Arnold Caricature from Punch, 1881: Admit that Homer sometimes nods, That poets do write trash, Our Bard has written Balder Dead, And also Balder-dash Family tree Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic, who worked as an inspector of schools. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Analysis of the poem

"Dover Beach," says Park Honan, "opens with images of confidence and beauty and profound security." Reflecting the traditional notion that the poem was written during Arnold's honeymoon (see Date of composition below), he goes on to say, "The speaker might be talking to his bride in a moonlit city near glimmering chalk cliffs." ^[2] Allott notes that "in ll. 1-6 much of the effectiveness of the descriptions depends on the high proportion of monosyllables and the simplicity of the key epithets 'calm', 'fair', 'tranquil'. In l.6 the window is approached and the sweetness of the air felt before the sound of the sea is first heard in the following lines."^[3] Allott also detects an echo of Senancour's Obermann in these opening lines.^[4] Senancour (1770-1846) Étienne Pivert de Senancour (Paris, 16 November 1770 - Saint-Cloud, 10 January 1846), was a French writer. ...

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-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.

In the second section of the poem, Arnold invokes Sophocles (495 BC - 406 BC) who was, Allott tells us, "Arnold's favorite Greek dramatist." Allott goes on, however, to point out that "no passage in the plays [of Sophocles] is strictly applicable" to the passage in "Dover Beach". ^[5] Tinker and Lowry suggest passages from the plays Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus at Colonus, and Philoctetes. But they add that "the Greek author has reference only to the successive blows of Fate which fall upon a particular family which has been devoted to destruction by the gods. The plight described metaphorically by the English poet is conceived to have fallen upon the whole human race."^[6] Allott feels that the passage from the Trachiniae (The Women of Trachis) is closest. Also of note in this section, Arnold echoes the "distant northern shore" of line 20 in ll. 80-82 of his "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" which appears to have been written at about the same time. ^[7] This article is about the Greek tragedian. ...

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.

Honan calls the final lines "the most deeply felt seventeen lines ever written by a modern English poet." ^[8] He also connects the "vast edges drear" to a possible memory of Wastwater in the Lake District, which Honan describes as "mountainous grey 'scree' running into translucent depths of water." ^[9] Categories: English lakes | Cumbria | UK geography stubs ... The panorama across Eskdale from Ill Crag. ...

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.

The "famous simile" in the final lines "descriptive of armies engaged in dubious conflict by night, was probably inspired by the well-known passage in Thucydides' account of the battle of Epipolae. Here are to be found the details used by Arnold: a night-attack, fought upon a plain at the top of a cliff, in the moonlight, so that the soldiers could not distinguish clearly between friend and foe, with the resulting flight of certain Athenian troops, and various 'alarms,' watchwords, and battle-cries shouted aloud to the increasing confusion of all."^[10] Honan notes that John Henry Newman had used the image once "when he defined controversy as a sort of 'night battle'" and the image also occurs in Arthur Hugh Clough's The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.^[11] Tinker and Lowry point out that "there is evidence that the passage about the 'night-battle' was familiar coin among Rugbeians" at the time Arnold attended Rugby and studied under his father Dr. Thomas Arnold.^[12] Bust of Thucydides residing in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. ... J H Newman age 23 when he preached his first sermon. ... Arthur Hugh Clough (January 1, 1819 – November 13, 1861) was an English poet, and the brother of Anne Jemima Clough. ... The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, subtitled A Long-Vacation Pastoral is a lengthy narrative poem by the Victorian poet Arthur Hugh Clough, which was critically well-received at the time. ...

"The poem's discourse," Honan tells us, "shifts literally and symbolically from the present, to Sophocles on the Aegean, from Medeieval Europe back to the present—and the auditory and visual images are dramatic and mimetic and didactic. Exploring the dark terror that lies beneath his happiness in love, the speaker resolves to love—and exegencies of history and the nexus between lovers are the poem's real issues. That lovers may be 'true/To one another' is a precarious notion: love in the modern city, momentarily gives peace, but nothing else in a post-medieval society reflects or confirms the faithfulness of lovers. Devoid of love and light the world is a maze of confusion left by 'retreating' faith."^[13]

Date of composition

According to Tinker and Lowry, "a draft of the first twenty-eight lines of the poem" were written in pencil "on the back of a folded sheet of paper containing notes on the career of Empedocles."^[14] Allott concludes that the notes are probably from around 1849-50.^[15] "Empedocles on Etna," again according to Allott, was probably written 1849-52, the notes on Empedocles are likely to be contemporary with the writing of that poem. ^[16]

The final line of this draft is:

And naked shingles of the world. Ah love &c

Tinker and Lowry conclude that this "seem[s] to indicate that the last nine lines of the poem as we know it were already in existence when the portion regarding the ebb and flow of the sea at Dover was composed." This would make the manuscript "a prelude to the concluding paragraph" of the poem in which "there is no reference to the sea or tides."^[17]

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 from pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Arnold's visits to Dover may also provide some clue to the date of composition. Allott has Arnold in Dover in June 1851 and again in October of that year "on his return from his delayed continental honeymoon." To critics who conclude that ll. 1-28 were written at Dover and ll. 29-37 "were rescued from some discarded poem," Allott suggests the contrary, i.e. that the final lines "were written at Dover in late June," while " ll. 29-37 were written in London shortly afterwards." ^[18]

The poem's influence

Anthony Hecht, US Poet Laureate, replied to "Dover Beach" in his poem "The Dover Bitch". Anthony Ivan Hecht, (January 16, 1923-October 20, 2004), was an American poet. ... The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress is appointed by the United States Librarian of Congress and earns a stipend of $35,000 a year. ...

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."

The anonymous figure to whom Arnold addresses his poem becomes the subject of Hecht's poem. In Hecht's poem she "caught the bitter allusion to the sea", imagined "what his whiskers would feel like / On the back of her neck", and felt sad as she looked out across the channel. "And then she got really angry" at the thought that she had become "a sort of mournful cosmic last resort." After which she says "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.^[19]

Kenneth and Miriam Allott, referring to "Dover Bitch" as "an irreverent jeu d'esprit," nonetheless see, particularly in the line "a sort of mournful cosmic last resort," an extension of the original's poem main theme.^[20]

"Dover Beach" has been mentioned in of a number of novels, plays, poems, and films. Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 alludes to the poem in the chapter Havermyer: "the open-air movie theater in which—for the daily amusement of the dying—ignorant armies clashed by night on a collapsible screen." In Fahrenheit 451, author Ray Bradbury has his protagonist Guy Montag read part of "Dover Beach" to his wife Mildred and her friends. Samuel Barber composed a setting of "Dover Beach" for string quartet and baritone. In Dodie Smith's novel, I Capture the Castle, the book's protagonist remarks that Debussy's Clair de Lune reminds her of "Dover Beach" (in the film adaptation of the novel, the character quotes (or, rather, misquotes) a line from the poem). Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American satirical novelist and playwright. ... Catch 22 can refer to: A book by Joseph Heller, or the movie based on the book; see Catch-22. ... This article is about the novel. ... Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an American literary, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer best known for The Martian Chronicles, a 1950 book which has been described both as a short story collection and a novel, and his 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, is widely considered... A protagonist is the main figure of a piece of literature or drama and has the main part or role. ... Guy Montag is the central character in Ray Bradburys 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451. ... Samuel Barber, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1944 Samuel Osborne Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer of classical music ranging from orchestral, to opera, choral, and piano music. ... The resident string quartet of the Library of Congress in 1963 A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments—usually two violins, a viola and cello—or a piece written to be performed by such a group. ... Baritone (French: ; German: ; Italian: ) is most commonly the type of male voice that lies between bass and tenor. ... Dorothy Gladys Dodie Smith (May 3, 1896 - November 24, 1990) was an English novelist and playwright. ... I Capture the Castle was the first novel written by Dodie Smith, published in 1948. ... Claude Debussy Claude Achille Debussy (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918), composer of impressionistic classical music. ... Clair de Lune (Moonlight in French) is the name of various works in various fields of the arts. ...

It is also mentioned in Saturday by Ian McEwan, The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy, Rush song "Armor and Sword", from the album Snakes and Arrows (lyrics by Neil Peart), Nora's Lost, a short drama by Alan Haehnel, and the poem "Moon" by Billy Collins. Kevin Kline's character, Cal Gold, in the film The Anniversary Party recites part of "Dover Beach" as a toast. The poem has also provided a ready source for titles: A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve, As On a Darkling Plain by Ben Bova (the title refers here to a lunar plain covered with strange unexplained artifacts), andClash by Night a play by Clifford Odets (later made into a film noir by Fritz Lang) Daljit Nagra's prize-winning poem "Look We Have Coming to Dover!" quotes the line, "So various, so beautiful, so new" as its epigraph. The British hardcover edition, with the BT Tower in the background Saturday (2005) is a novel by the British author Ian McEwan that charts the day of a 48 year old London neurosurgeon called Henry Perowne. ... Ian McEwan CBE (born June 21, 1948) is a British novelist. ... The Last Gentleman is a 1966 novel by Walker Percy. ... Walker Percy (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American Southern author whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. ... Rush is a Canadian rock band comprising bassist, keyboardist, and lead vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. ... Snakes & Arrows is the nineteenth studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush, which will be released on May 1st, 2007 (see 2007 in music). ... Neil Ellwood Peart (IPA: ) OC, (born September 12, 1952 in Hamilton, Ontario) is a Canadian musician and author. ... William J. (Billy) Collins (born March 22, 1941) is a poet who served two terms as the 11th Poet Laureate of the United States, from 2001 to 2003. ... Kevin Delaney Kline (born October 24, 1947) is an Academy Award- and Tony Award-winning American stage and film actor. ... The Anniversary Party is a 2001 movie, written, directed, and starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming. ... A Darkling Plain (ISBN 0-439-94997-1) is the fourth and final novel in the Hungry City Chronicles series written by author Philip Reeve. ... Philip Reeve is a bestselling British author and illustrator. ... Benjamin William Bova (born November 8, 1932) is an American science fiction author and editor. ... Clash by Night is a 1952 black-and-white film noir/drama starring Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas and Robert Ryan, with an effective appearance by Marilyn Monroe. ... Clifford Odets photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1937 Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 - August 18, 1963) was an American socialist playwright, screenwriter, and social protester. ... Friedrich Christian Anton Fritz Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter and occasional film producer, one of the best known émigrés from Germanys school of Expressionism. ... Daljit Nagra is a British poet whose debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover!, was published by Faber in February 2007. ...

Even in the U. S. Supreme Court the poem has had its influence: Justice William Rehnquist, in his concurring opinion in Northern Pipeline Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50 (1982), compared judicial decisions regarding the power of Congress to create legislative courts to "landmarks on a judicial 'darkling plain' where ignorant armies have clashed by night." The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C., (large image) The Supreme Court of the United States, located in Washington, D.C., is the highest court (see supreme court) in the United States; that is, it has ultimate judicial authority within the United States... William Hubbs Rehnquist (October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American lawyer, jurist, and a political figure who served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States and later as the Chief Justice of the United States. ... Holding The U.S. Bankruptcy Courts could not exercise the full powers of an Article III court. ...

Notes

“TIME” redirects here. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 214th day of the year (215th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

• Professors Chauncey Brewster Tinker and Howard Foster Lowry, The Poetry of Matthew Arnold: A Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1940) Alibris ID 8235403151

• Kenneth Allott (editor), The Poems of Matthew Arnold (London and New York: Longman Norton, 1965) ISBN 0393043770
• Park Honan, Matthew Arnold, a life (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1981) ISBN 0070296979

Kenneth Allott (1911-1973) was a Welsh poet and academic, and authority on Matthew Arnold. ...

External links

• Text of the poem