Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Free verse, Irregular rhyme
Related content:
Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach". A concise analysis: background, mood, poetic techniques.
Still, a lot of the best poetry was written out of angst and despair, and "Dover Beach" is a fine poem. Give it a whirl!
This is an edited cut of the original 24-minute video, which you can watch here, with timings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db7xrxjhNmM. That's the version to go for if you want the full lowdown on this poem, but this 16-minute version will give you the main points!
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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.Show More
10 Comments
Thank you very much for this wonderful presentation. I’m touched beyond the words.👍Much love from Sri Lanka🇱🇰
Thank you so much for your feedback. I’m very happy that you liked it!
Excellent . Love from Sri Lanka🇱🇰
Thank you for the feedback! I was in Sri Lanka very briefly many years ago. Lovely country, wonderful people!
Excellent work here, John!
It occurs to me that perhaps the Sea of Faith is not only (or not so much?) a description of an earlier age in history when people were more religious, but rather about a loss of childhood faith? Certainly there have been disbelievers and doubters in every age, though more recent centuries allow more freedom of belief in many (though not all) cultures. But perhaps the poem involves a projection of lost personal faith onto the world in that way? Your detailed and sustained attention to the poem inspires new possibilities for me. It also brings to mind a poem by a teacher whose student takes “Sea of Faith” too literally and wonders if there is a body of water by that name, prompting at first a repressed inner sarcastic rant from the teacher, but later, empathy for the student. I will have to look up that poem – the author and name escapes me at the moment.
Ha! Hi, Paul, and thank you. I don’t know that poem – let me know when you dig it out!
As to whether Arnold is talking about his own loss of faith or about the mores of the age, of course you may be right. Perhaps my judgement here is clouded is my perception of him as a reflection of the age in which he lived, rather than seeing him as an individual with doubts and crises of belief and whatnot.
Perhaps the reason we still read this poem is because the personal aspects of it (written, as it presumably was, around the time of his marriage, and reflecting his own feelings about religion) blend so aptly with the spirit of the age.
I don’t know enough about him, to be honest, to be able to say whether – or to what extent – he is regretting his own loss of faith here, though he seems to me to have been rather like myself in that respect; interested in religious matters, and aware of their significance in shaping societies and moral values, but not personally committed in the way that, say, religious martyrs of the sixteenth century had been.
Overall, the poem seems to me to be about the state of the world, rather than the state of Matthew Arnold, but of course when it comes to great poetry no one gets to have the final word.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment!
@anosensei Here’s a link to the poem, appropriately named “Sea of Faith” by Jon Brehm:
https://readalittlepoetry.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/sea-of-faith-by-john-brehm/
@jubileelampstand8717 Ha! Thanks!
I’m impressed with the way you treat poetry as something we can not just read but also visualise.
I really appreciate it.
Hi, Norio! Thank you for your comment. I’m never quite sure what will work and what will not. My critiques of Keats and Shelley have been very successful here on YouTube, but so far my work on Arnold hasn’t attracted much attention. Perhaps he is less studied than they are?
Anyway, yes, the reason poets use imagery is to stimulate our imagination. A poem is a picture (or a series of pictures)!