Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Free verse, Irregular rhyme
Related content:
Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach". Reading and in-depth analysis. Background, techniques, atmosphere.
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!
0:00 Intro
0:18 A poem is a picture
0:49 First stanza, lines 1-6: A reading
1:40 First stanza: Visualization
2:07 A poem is a voice
2:27 First stanza, lines 1-6: Poetic technique
4:50 First stanza, lines 106: Overall analysis
5:53 First stanza, lines 7-14: A reading
6:46 First stanza, lines 7-14: Poetic technique
8:10: First stanza, overall: Rhythm and rhyme
11:03 Second stanza: A reading
11:23 What's Sophocles got to do with it?
12:33 Why should we care?
13:04 Second stanza: Technique (rhyme, rhythm)
14:34 Round-up
15:01 Third stanza: A reading
15:44 The metaphor of the "Sea of Faith"
16:36 Third stanza: Technique (rhyme, alliteration, lexis and echoes of the first stanza)
18:39 Final stanza: A reading
19:31 Completing the picture
20:02 Background information
20:49 Final stanza: Technique (alliteration, repetition)
23:25 Overall: The balance of positive and negative elements
"Ano sensei!" has made in-depth videos on Keats's Odes (https://tinyurl.com/anokeats), Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (https://tinyurl.com/anokubla), Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" (https://tinyurl.com/anotintern) and many others. Subscribe/join and get the best poetry analysis videos on YouTube!
Ano sensei's tip: The biggest difference between the good students and the not-so-good students is that the good ones watch the video right through to the end! Come back to it as many times as you need to, but try to watch all of it!
Click here to view this video open-access and ad-free: https://educationalhub.org/videos/294/165/matthew-arnold-dover-beach-detailed-analysis/channel_id/4
Dover Beach is perhaps Arnold's best-known poem, and there's plenty to talk about here! He's not the most cheerful person in the world, but that's part of what makes him such a good poet. He ranks alongside Tennyson and Browning as one of the most notable poets of his generation. If 24 minutes is too long for you, there's a shorter version of this presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqn7UWOdin8!
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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
46 Comments
I was looking for an explanation just like this. really well done, thanks.
Thank you & you’re welcome! This is one of my personal favourites; the visuals took me a while, but it was worth it!
Thank you.
You are welcome!
Right, we need this so much because it’s not like, you know, this poem has been analyzed thousand of times before. You pontificating blowhard – at least pretend you’ve got something new and meaningful to add to this. What a poser. However, the really sad thing is how people watching this nonsense bother with these cloying comments rife with supreme ignorance. “That person must be talking to someone . . . ” No kidding! Thanks.
Appreciate your very enlightening analysis of this piece. Question: why does Arnold vary the line lengths instead of keeping to uniform foot count? Thank you!
Essentially, poetic technique is the way the poet conveys the mood, or feel, of the poem. By varying the line lengths, Arnold gives himself just that extra bit of flexibility to create those mood changes – the simplicity of the opening line, the balance of the second line, the slight complication of the next three lines, giving a sense of the poet’s gaze shifting focus from one aspect of the scent to another, leading to the balance of the sixth line. And so on.
In this respect, Arnold anticipates a major feature of a lot of modern poetry.
Brilliant. Most beautifully expressed. Thank you! (I think there is no evidence that Arnold wrote it when he visited Dover (1851) on his way to France for his honeymoon. He might have imagined it then, but he perhaps rewrote or changed, improved it until he got it published in 1867)
Thank you! The precise date of composition of “Dover Beach” is a matter of considerable debate. One of the (to my mind) more persuasive arguments for the 1851-2 date is made by S. O. A. Ullmann, in “Dating through Calligraphy: The Example of ‘Dover Beach'” (Studies in Bibliography Vol. 26 [1973], pp. 19-36). Ullmann factors in an analysis of the handwriting of the manuscript, along with other circumstantial references.
Anyone with an institutional log-in can access the article on JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40371569#metadata_info_tab_contents), and I believe those without a log-in can view a certain number of articles free per month.
If it was not actually written while Arnold was in Dover, the likeliest scenario is that it was “recollected in tranquillity” (as Wordsworth puts it) fairly shortly afterwards.
But you are right; the dating of “Dover Beach” is more a matter of balancing probabilities than of hard and fast evidence. I tend to think the 1851-2 date is correct, but I could perhaps have indicated in the video that this is a likelihood, not a certainty – and, of course, he probably did work on it over the years between the original draft and the final publication in 1867.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Hello Ano Sensei, I wonder if you have an email address (I could not find one). A friend would like to write to you about some teaching work.
Hello kind sir I wanted to thank you for your efforts, really lovely work. I am an English major student from Saudi Arabia and now studying poetry. Your video have helped me a lot , I appreciate that and thank you again ❤️.
Thank you for your feedback. I have made many more poetry videos, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwI6PbYTLTM&list=PLzVb6yL_jY69EiXaYHcLdERHMUA7nub5u. Please share these videos with others and help the channel to grow. I hope poetry will be your treasure all through your life.
@anosensei absolutely!! It would be my pleasure
@ft9266 Thank you!
0:00 Intro
0:18 A poem is a picture
0:49 First stanza, lines 1-6: A reading
1:40 First stanza: Visualization
2:07 A poem is a voice
2:27 First stanza, lines 1-6: Poetic technique
4:50 First stanza, lines 106: Overall analysis
5:53 First stanza, lines 7-14: A reading
6:46 First stanza, lines 7-14: Poetic technique
8:10: First stanza, overall: Rhythm and rhyme
11:03 Second stanza: A reading
11:23 What’s Sophocles got to do with it?
12:33 Why should we care?
13:04 Second stanza: Technique (rhyme, rhythm)
14:34 Round-up
15:01 Third stanza: A reading
15:44 The metaphor of the “Sea of Faith”
16:36 Third stanza: Technique (rhyme, alliteration, lexis and echoes of the first stanza)
18:39 Final stanza: A reading
19:31 Completing the picture
20:02 Background information
20:49 Final stanza: Technique (alliteration, repetition)
23:25 Overall: The balance of positive and negative elements
🙂really nice,
thanks for sharing🙂
You’re welcome. I’m glad you enjoyed it!
The mastery of the editing deserves an award thank you sooo much I appreciate it
Thank you! I started making videos after I retired. I just love it as a different way of teaching!
Thank you very much for the amazing analysis
You are welcome!
💐💐💐💐💐
Good evening professor!!
My professor asked us to find what is classical and what is victorian in this poem.Could you please help me with that?
The answer is already there! Watch the video carefully and reread the poem. There is only one short section of the poem that refers to classical times. I’m sure you can find it. And where the poet uses the word “now”, well, that’s where he talks about what’s going on in Victorian times!
I should perhaps add that “now” is contrasted with “once”, but the period referred to by “once” is not strictly classical times. It refers mainly, I think, to medieval and perhaps early modern belief in Christianity, though that isn’t made specific.
That raises the question, of course, of what is going on in Arnold’s time that has changed people’s attitude towards faith…
Very informative and quite useful…Thanks for uploading this…
You’re welcome. I’m glad you found it useful!
@anosensei
Please keep it up and make more videos..It will help many students..
@mashalkhan9938 Thank you! I will. I am busy with other things for a while, but expect more videos in a few weeks’ time!
@anosensei
Thanks… We shall wait…
Excellent work, I must say; your manner of explanation is inspired. And though the poem may not be, the spoilers were fun.
Ha! Yes, Arnold’s a bit of a misery, isn’t he? But then, so many poets are. I try to get students engaged with all those complicated feelings without getting bogged down with them!🙂
So much effort put into this. Thank you!
Thank you for the feedback. It was a labour of love!
Thanks!!! Really helpful how you showed the imagery of how you see it
Thank you for the feedback! Yes, I feel that visualizing the imagery is an important part of poetry appreciation. The words should create pictures in our head. It’s a kind of relationship between us and the poem; we have to do our bit and visualize it, otherwise it’s just dead words on the page!
@anosensei Yes, and I really have to work on that! But the more effort and attention I put into the better I get.
By the way, at 14:35 you said Socrates but meant Sophocles I think 🙂
@futurechris2283 Oh, goodness! You’re right!
@futurechris2283 YouTube only allows limited editing of a video once it’s been uploaded, but I think I’ve managed to fudge it enough that the blip is no longer noticeable. Thank you for pointing it out!
@anosensei no problem, you’re welcome! Thanks for making and sharing this video and your knowledge!
Excellent performance
Thank you!
Extraordinary effort sir thanks alot
I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for this! Really helped me in my English Composition course.
Thanks for the feedback!I’m glad you found it useful.