Before the poem itself can be addressed, a brief

Background of Matthew Arnold's life is necessary to

understand the poem and the mood it conveys. Matthew Arnold lived from 1822 through 1888. He was an English poet, whose work is representative of Victorian intellectual concerns and who was the foremost literary critic of his age. Arnold was born in Laleham, Middlesex, the son of Thomas Arnold, famous headmaster of Rugby School. Matthew Arnold was educated at Rugby and at Balliol College, University of Oxford, where, in 1843, his poem "Cromwell" won the Newdigate prize. After a period teaching the classics at

The speaker recalls the "Sophocles" when he compares the tide and flow of the bay to the flow of "human misery". This is used as a reminder of the misery that surrounds Arnold and his fiance that her father brought to them. The "naked shingles" of the world show that there is no protection from the elements around them. The speaker then draws an analogy between the receding tide of the bay and the so-called "Sea of Faith". Historically, in the Church of England there was a split in difference about the creation of man, a problem that Arnold was concerned with as for his creation and the creation and durability of his love for his fiance. The speaker suggests that we are all left with the rough sea that washes over Dover Beach. In the final stanza, the speaker again directly addresses his future bride and his tone returns to that of calm sense as he presents the idea of comfort through faith, as way to preserve their love they have for each other as the one thing they can both hold and trust. (Furr 716)

An example of this is the description of the tide being "full" and the sea being "calm" are both literal images and scientifically factual under certain conditions, but the idea of the moon as "fair", makes it seemingly something more than a spacious body, but less then a fine-looking face. The speaker of the poem says he hears "the grating roar / Of pebbles," but the iambic waves seem to then dominate the next few lines of the poem. The underlying metaphorical language appears when the description of the tide is brought in saying, "begin, and cease, and then again begin" which brings the "eternal note of sadness in". The ever-present metaphorical note overwhelms the literal sound of the sea, yielding the ideas of beginning and end, and drowning out the meter with a monotonic meter. The sea is lost like the Romantic Movement of the night on Dover Beach when nature was recreated in tranquility. When the concept of the "Sea of Faith" is introduced, the metaphorical logic has essential been previously constructed. Thus when Arnold metaphorizes his own metaphor, the image created is one of an obscurity and awkwardness. The "Sea of Faith" is an obvious metaphor, but the "bright girdle furled" is one that is clumsy and obscure in its location and meaning. The combination of these images suggests a loss of confidence of poetic language by the poet. The night wind blowing along the naked shingles of the dark and dreary world is the contrast of the life giving wind that was responsible for inspiring the Romantic poets. The five lines concluding this poem exhaust it as an auditory metaphor that consigns the unsteady pulse of poetic language to the "immemorial beating of empty time". (Pratt 80-82

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1835
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)