DOVER BEACH
By Matthew Arnold
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 Agean, 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.
1867
“Dover Beach,” by Matthew Arnold, surprised me. It was meant as a prelude to our longer study of the novel Saturday, and I was not expecting a poem written about a beach off the coast of England to ring true with someone of the cultural background that I have. But it did.
It’s a hackneyed expression, but I will say it: the poem brought tears to my eyes. The image of two lovers on a balcony by a beach prompted in me not romantic memories, but memories of my parents, of the two people in the world who love me best. The poem felt to me almost like a song, a song of melancholy, and it spoke to the feelings of loneliness that I inevitably encounter at the end of every school year. It’s a common misconception that homesickness is only felt during the fall term. My homesickness only intensifies as the year wanes on, and especially during the spring, the weeks feel impossibly long although the reasonable part of my brain tells me that there are fewer of them left.
My mom speaks often of how difficult it was for her to send me off to Deerfield. Her philosophy has always been that there is nothing but immediate family, which, for us, comprises of three people, my mother, my father, and me. She believes that we are a team, that we look out for each other in a world where no one else will feel the obligation to do the same. She says this is the power, the miracle, of family. I’ve always been skeptical of these lessons, because I’ve always thought that her lessons were too cynical for the American world that I lived in for most of the year. But the lines “the world… /Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,/nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…” are so bare and honest that they made me think, maybe Mom had a point.
Deerfield has exhausted me these past couple of months- and it’s because of the underlying element of competition that is always present at this school, captured perfectly by Arnold in his lines, “confused alarms of struggle and flight…/Where ignorant armies clash by night.” We might pretend otherwise, but it’s difficult to always be compared to others, to have to “come out on top, “ to have the pressure of that big, dark, abstract, frightening beast called “your future” hanging over your sophomore head that would like nothing better than to get a full seven hours of sleep for once. And most times, we grow increasingly unsure as to what exactly we’re working towards.
I think that the power of family is often underestimated by students of my age. I’m fifteen going on sixteen, and I feel guilty, inadequate, for being a little bit sad to see other students hand-in-hand with their parents during Parents’ weekend, but it can’t be denied. Sometimes, I wish that I had my mom dropping by once every month to chide me for the clothes I leave lying around my room, just like the girl who lives across the hall. I have not grown up yet, and I don’t feel as if I need to have grown up completely.
I was impressed at the power of the poem in bringing all of these repressed thoughts out of me, an achievement that can be attributed to Arnold’s effective use of imagery. His line, “retreating… down the vast edges drear/And naked shingles of the world” was reminiscent for me of the old belief that the world is flat, that there’s an edge that you can fall off and then be forgotten forever. This imagery helped me- or should I say, forced me- to confront my own fear about my own insignificance, the abstract but crushing fear of not achieving anything of worth to leave behind.
But above all, Arnold’s “Dover Beach” has left a lasting impression on me because of its stark honesty. The poem was liberating in that it recognized that we live all in an unrelenting state of weariness, a heaviness of the eyelids that never abates. Yet while Arnold’s honest concession, that the world has no sympathy for “losers,” touched Baxter’s heart, the most touching element of his poem for me was in fact his recognition of the one thing that sustains us, the one thing that renders us human- our love for others. I don’t know, still, if humans are born good or evil, but I think in my studies this year, and in living life this year, I’ve discovered that all of us are bound together by one thing- our desire to be held tight when we feel as if we’ll never be able to stop fighting, fighting constantly to prove our worth when we wish that “worth” was something that was self-evident.
By Matthew Arnold
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 Agean, 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.
1867
“Dover Beach,” by Matthew Arnold, surprised me. It was meant as a prelude to our longer study of the novel Saturday, and I was not expecting a poem written about a beach off the coast of England to ring true with someone of the cultural background that I have. But it did.
It’s a hackneyed expression, but I will say it: the poem brought tears to my eyes. The image of two lovers on a balcony by a beach prompted in me not romantic memories, but memories of my parents, of the two people in the world who love me best. The poem felt to me almost like a song, a song of melancholy, and it spoke to the feelings of loneliness that I inevitably encounter at the end of every school year. It’s a common misconception that homesickness is only felt during the fall term. My homesickness only intensifies as the year wanes on, and especially during the spring, the weeks feel impossibly long although the reasonable part of my brain tells me that there are fewer of them left.
My mom speaks often of how difficult it was for her to send me off to Deerfield. Her philosophy has always been that there is nothing but immediate family, which, for us, comprises of three people, my mother, my father, and me. She believes that we are a team, that we look out for each other in a world where no one else will feel the obligation to do the same. She says this is the power, the miracle, of family. I’ve always been skeptical of these lessons, because I’ve always thought that her lessons were too cynical for the American world that I lived in for most of the year. But the lines “the world… /Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,/nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…” are so bare and honest that they made me think, maybe Mom had a point.
Deerfield has exhausted me these past couple of months- and it’s because of the underlying element of competition that is always present at this school, captured perfectly by Arnold in his lines, “confused alarms of struggle and flight…/Where ignorant armies clash by night.” We might pretend otherwise, but it’s difficult to always be compared to others, to have to “come out on top, “ to have the pressure of that big, dark, abstract, frightening beast called “your future” hanging over your sophomore head that would like nothing better than to get a full seven hours of sleep for once. And most times, we grow increasingly unsure as to what exactly we’re working towards.
I think that the power of family is often underestimated by students of my age. I’m fifteen going on sixteen, and I feel guilty, inadequate, for being a little bit sad to see other students hand-in-hand with their parents during Parents’ weekend, but it can’t be denied. Sometimes, I wish that I had my mom dropping by once every month to chide me for the clothes I leave lying around my room, just like the girl who lives across the hall. I have not grown up yet, and I don’t feel as if I need to have grown up completely.
I was impressed at the power of the poem in bringing all of these repressed thoughts out of me, an achievement that can be attributed to Arnold’s effective use of imagery. His line, “retreating… down the vast edges drear/And naked shingles of the world” was reminiscent for me of the old belief that the world is flat, that there’s an edge that you can fall off and then be forgotten forever. This imagery helped me- or should I say, forced me- to confront my own fear about my own insignificance, the abstract but crushing fear of not achieving anything of worth to leave behind.
But above all, Arnold’s “Dover Beach” has left a lasting impression on me because of its stark honesty. The poem was liberating in that it recognized that we live all in an unrelenting state of weariness, a heaviness of the eyelids that never abates. Yet while Arnold’s honest concession, that the world has no sympathy for “losers,” touched Baxter’s heart, the most touching element of his poem for me was in fact his recognition of the one thing that sustains us, the one thing that renders us human- our love for others. I don’t know, still, if humans are born good or evil, but I think in my studies this year, and in living life this year, I’ve discovered that all of us are bound together by one thing- our desire to be held tight when we feel as if we’ll never be able to stop fighting, fighting constantly to prove our worth when we wish that “worth” was something that was self-evident.