"Dover Beach" Matthew Arnold Tonya Howe Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup Students and Staff at The University of Virginia Tonya Howe VIVA Literature in Context
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Published by Literature in Context under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License "Dover Beach" Matthew Arnold New Poems London Macmillan and Co. 1867 This digital edition has been transcribed from the first edition of New Poems, published in 1867. Page images courtesy of The University of Virginia Special Collections. "Dover Beach" is Arnold's most celebrated poem, and he began writing it over a decade before its publication and just after his marriage to Frances Lucy Wightman. It encapsulates much of Arnold's thought about the techtonic cultural shifts afoot during the Victorian period, especially around industrialization and its effects. In Culture and Anarchy, which was published at the same time as New Poems, Arnold gives prosaic voice to his view that culture--"the best which has been thought and said in the world"--is a balm or corrective to the mechanizations of the modern world (the quote comes from the preface to Culture and Anarchy). The poem addresses an unknown auditor, perhaps a representation of his spouse, and given the time of its authorship as well as its themes, critics often term "Dover Beach" a honeymoon poem in which love has perhaps a salvific effect. [2] p. l., [vii]-viii, 244 p. 18 cm. pp 112-114 English print single poem Dover

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 Numbered divs used. Library of Congress Name Authority File Library of Congress Classification Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Open Researcher and Contributor ID First Pass XML and Page Images NEW POEMS BY MATTHEW ARNOLD LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. M DCCC LXVII
DOVER BEACH. 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 ebb meets the moon-blanched sand, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves suck 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 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. The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd; 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.