This makes the connection between the distant past and the present seem almost seamless. See how he slips that "we" in at the end of line 18? He's zooming us back to the present, without even ending the sentence. He could have easily stopped and started the next line back in the present although breaking it up the way he does helps with the iambic meter.
Instead, he just zips back, without stopping, forcing us to keep moving at his pace. Lines Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. Now we're fully back in the poem's present, back on the shore of the English Channel. Here he calls the Channel "this distant northern sea. Just like Sophocles, "we" find a thought in the sound of the waves. Who's this "we," by the way? Line 18 is the first time the speaker has referred to we.
In the excerpt he suggests that those pebbles are also regarded as the representation of misery to Sophocles, who, like him, felt melancholy looking at the sea. Mathew Arnold mentions Sophocles in this excerpt of "Dover Beach" because it enhances the melancholic tone of the poem.
The poems refer to the port of Dover, in England, where his honeymoon was held. When he wrote about Sophocles saying that: "Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought. Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery," Arnold shares the sadness and melancholic moments he experimented.
In that certain excerpt from "Dover Beach", Matthew Arnold speaks of a certain note of sadness that Sophocles also heard which led to his publications about human misery. The author is suggesting that he also heard what Sophocles heard, and is therefore also experiencing extreme sadness or melancholy.
Your email address will not be published. Consequently, the existence of God and the whole Christian scheme of things was cast in doubt. He remained a believer in God and religion, although he was open to—and advocated—an overhaul of traditional religious thinking.
In God and the Bible , he wrote: "At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is. Type of Work. Because the meter and rhyme vary from line to line, the poem is said to be in free verse--that is, it is unencumbered by the strictures of traditional versification.
However, there is cadence in the poem, achieved through the following:. Year of Publication. Although Matthew Arnold completed "Dover Beach" in or , the poem was not published until It appeared in a collection entitled New Poems , published in London. 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! Notes, Stanza 1. A strait is a narrow body of water that connects two larger bodies of water.
The distance between the port cities of Dover, England, and Calais, France, is about twenty-one miles via the Strait of Dover. In addition, the clause foreshadows the message of later lines--that the light of faith in God and religion, once strong, now flickers.
Whether an observer at Dover can actually see a light at Calais depends on the height of the lighthouse and the altitude at which the observer sees the light because of the curvature of the earth , on the brightness of the light, and on the weather conditions. Like the light from France, they glimmer, further developing the theme of a weakening of the light of faith.
The fact that they easily erode supports this theme. However, it may be an exaggeration that that pebbles cause a grating roar. 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. Aegean : Arnold alludes here to a passage in the ancient Greek play Antigone , by Sophocles, in which Sophocles says the gods can visit ruin on people from one generation to the next, like a swelling tide driven by winds.
Aegean : The sea between Greece and Turkey.
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