Dover Beach Poem

Decent Essays
Vincent Signorile
Dr. Jackson
EN 226-02
24 October 2016
“Dover Beach”
“Dover Beach” is a poem written by Mathew Arnold. It is a four-stanza poem in which the first stanza has fourteen lines, the second has six lines, the third has eight lines, and the fourth has nine lines. It can be noticed that if you flip the poem sideways, the words go up and down, just like waves do. “Dover Beach” does not contain the normal rhyme scheme, as only stanzas two and four have a rhyme scheme. Stanza two’s rhyme scheme is ABACBC, while stanza four’s is ABBACDDCC. The lines in the poem have a sad drearily meaning to it, which describes them like beauty, religion, sadness, and humanity. It also provides the reader with a sense of imagery, allusions, and analogies..
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For most of the lines in the poem, Arnold paints a picture for the reader to imagine while they read what is on the page. The imagery starts in the first two lines of the poem, “The Sea is calm-to-night. The tide is full; the moon lies fair (lines 1-2). Its paints imagery of a quiet calm ocean at night, with the moon in the background, while the hearing the peaceful tides. There is also more vivid imagery that stands out in the first stanza. “Listen! You hear the grating roar of pebbles, which the waves draw back, and fling (lines 9-10). This is more peaceful imagery displayed by Arnold, and is one of the last before the poem takes on its somber tone. It is peaceful because it is talking about the waves drawing back and the noise of the pebbles. This allows the reader to hear the poem, because of how descriptive Arnold was, the reader could hear the waves going back and forth, and the noise of the …show more content…
The first line of the stanza “the sea of faith” (line 21) shows this to be true. Arnold is referring to religion and trying to have some faith. The third stanza starts off by talking about faith and ends with talking about how there is no faith anymore in the world, when Arnold says, “And the naked shingles of the world” (line 28). There is a sense of sound when Arnold says, “But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” (lines 24-25). The sound is a loud roar, and the keywords in those lines are “but now” and “only.” It shows the negative dreary meaning to what Arnold hears. The world “only” signifies that Arnold is disappointed, and that he wanted to hear

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