Mathew Arnold’s Dover Beach
Line 1
The sea is calm tonight.
• This first line gives us two simple, basic facts. It's nighttime, and the sea is calm. Can't you just picture it? Hey, that's all we need to start building a mental world.
• As you'll see, "Dover Beach" will end up running back in time and all over the world, but that image of the ocean at night will always be front-and-center.
• In addition to giving us the image that will anchor the poem, this line sets a very particular tone. The words are short and clear.
• The line ends with a period, making it a complete, simple sentence. There's no activity, just stillness and simplicity. In a word, this line iscalm, just like the ocean.
Line 2
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
• Here we get a little more description of the setting of this poem. It's high ("full") tide, the moon is out, and it's beautiful ("fair").
• We've pointed out how the first line was self-contained, a complete thought in itself. In this line, the end of the line isn't the end of the sentence, and the phrase "the moon lies fair" isn't complete? It makes the reader want to know where the moon lies fair, or how. To find out, you have to continue to the next line. That poetic technique, where a sentence is broken up across more than one line, is called enjambment.
• We also want to point out that little break in the middle of the line (marked by the comma). The line takes a pause here, between two complete phrases. That fancy little trick is called a caesura, and it divides the line into two parts.
Line 3
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
• That moon that's lingering from the last line? Well, it turns out that it "lies fair / Upon the straits." That just means that the moonlight is shining on a narrow body of water ("the straits"). The speaker tells us that he can see across the strait to the coast of France.
• If we put this together with the title "Dover Beach," we get a pretty clear idea of where the speaker is. He's on the coast of England, looking out at the English Channel, which separates England from France. Dover is a town (you might have heard of its famous white cliffs) right at the narrowest point in the channel. The French town of Calais is just a little over twenty miles away, which is why he can see the light there.
• Notice the enjambment in this line, too. Arnold keeps us rolling from line to line here, building up momentum in the beginning of the poem.
Lines 4-5
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
• Suddenly the light that he saw shines out and then disappears (with Arnold's much prettier alliteration, it "Gleams and is gone").
• When the light in France disappears, the speaker looks back at his own coast. Here he sees the famous white cliffs of Dover, which are shining in the moonlight out in bay. The bay, he reminds us, is "tranquil." This picks up the image of calm water from line 1.
• And once again we've got a the break in line 4. See how the line pauses at the semicolon, and then the speaker turns to a new thought? Yep, that's another caesura.
Line 6
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
• Here we get a little more information about what's happening in the world of the poem. We learn that the speaker is indoors (in a room with a window).
• We also find out that he's talking to someone who must be in the room with him—that's his audience.. We don't learn much about that person yet, but our speaker wants him or her to come to window to smell the "sweet" air.
• The tone of the poem is still really calm. Adjectives like "tranquil" and "sweet" establish a relaxing, comforting mood here at the beginning of things.
Lines 7-8
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
• Now, all of a sudden, we've got a little shift on our hands. As we look out with the speaker and his companion, he says "Only." (Here that means something like "But.")
• Only what? What's the matter with this scene? Arnold is just beginning to build our expectation.
• The speaker draws our attention to the edge of the water, and the surf ("the long line of spray"). Instead of looking at the beautiful landscape as a whole, we're looking at the specific point where the sea meets the land.
• And check out that vivid image of the "moon-blanched land." Blanched means "whitened" —we might say "bleached." You know how bright moonlight can make the whole world look white? Well, that's what our speaker is talking about.
Line 9
Listen! you hear the grating roar
• Before, we were imagining what this scene looked like. Now the speaker tells his companion (and us) to change the frame, to use one of our other senses.
• Suddenly we're going to "Listen!" (that exclamation point is mean to wake us up) to the sound of the water.
• Turns out that sound isn't "calm" or "tranquil" like the moonlight on the water. The speaker describes it as a "grating roar."
• The harshness of the word "grating" might be a little surprising, since there's nothing relaxing about a grating sound. It seems to Shmoop that the atmosphere of this poem is changing. Let's keep a weather eye out for more shifts in the future.
Lines 10-11
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
• That "grating" sound from line? That comes from the sound of pebbles. Those little rocks are being pulled out by the waves as they go out, and then thrown back up on the beach ("strand" is another word for beach or shore) when the waves come back in.
• Maybe you've heard that sound before, like a rhythmic rumble, a giant breathing. The speaker really focuses in on the sound of the waves. He wants us to really feel their inevitable, steady force. Because if one thing's fore sure, it's that waves will continued to crash on beaches all the world over.
Lines 12-13
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
• The grating sound of the pebbles starts, and then stops, and then starts again. The speaker has a fancy way of describing this rhythm of the ocean. He calls it a "tremulous cadence slow."
• Let's break that one down, huh? "Tremulous" means shaky or trembling. We think that comes from the fact that this one big sound is made up of many little sounds of rolling pebbles. "Cadence" refers to the rhythm of that repeated sound. That's a significant word to use in a poem of all things, where rhythm is so crucial to the reading experience. The speaker hears a slow rhythm in the sound of the waves, and it mingles in with the rhythm of his poem.
• And just what is the rhythm of this poem? Well, Arnold plays around with that a little. The basic meter for the poem is iambic, which has just the same kind of rolling rhythm as those waves.
• Line 12 is actually a great example of that: Begin, and cease, andthen again begin. See? Perfect iambic pentameter.
• That's not the case everywhere though; he switches things up a fair amount. For more on that, see our "Form and Meter" section.
Line 14
The eternal note of sadness in.
• Now the rubber really hits the road in this poem. We started out calm and tranquil, but the first stanza ends on a much darker note, with the introduction of a "note of sadness."
• We think the word "note" is pretty key here. It picks up on the word "cadence" up above, and makes us think that the sound of the world is something like music.
• This isn't just a temporary sadness, either. It's "eternal." Our speaker clearly thinks that the music of the world has an endless sadness built into it.
Lines 15-16
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
• Now the sound of the pebbles in the waves turns into a kind of time machine, and takes the speaker (and us) on a mental journey back to ancient Greece.
• He imagines the famous playwright Sophocles heard the same sound as he stood next to the Aegean Sea (that's the part of the Mediterranean that separates Greece from Turkey).
• This little allusion to the past keys us into Arnold's interest in the past, and especially classical Greece and Rome. It also creates a connection between the great poetic mind of Sophocles and our speaker. They are linked, across the centuries, by the act of listening to the sea and thinking about humanity.
Lines 17-18
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
• Sophocles was one of the great Greek authors of tragic plays—you know, those bummer dramas where everyone ends up dead or miserable? So it's probably not that surprising that the ocean makes him think of "the turbid ebb and flow of human misery." "Turbid" means "cloudy, stirred up, muddy and murky" and it's often used to refer to water.
• So, Sophocles is imagining an analogy between human unhappiness and cloudy water moving in and out ("the ebb and flow").
• Also, have you been keeping an eye on how much enjambment this poem has? This particular stanza (lines 15-20) is just one long sentence broken up over five lines. 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 easily have 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 18-19
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." By distant he just means far away from Sophocles and the Aegean.
• Just like Sophocles, "we" find a thought in the sound of the waves. Who's this "we," by the way? Line 17 is the first time the speaker has referred to we. Maybe he just means him and his companion (whom he invited to
النتائج (
العربية) 1:
[نسخ]نسخ!
Mathew Arnold’s Dover BeachLine 1The sea is calm tonight.• This first line gives us two simple, basic facts. It's nighttime, and the sea is calm. Can't you just picture it? Hey, that's all we need to start building a mental world. • As you'll see, "Dover Beach" will end up running back in time and all over the world, but that image of the ocean at night will always be front-and-center.• In addition to giving us the image that will anchor the poem, this line sets a very particular tone. The words are short and clear.• The line ends with a period, making it a complete, simple sentence. There's no activity, just stillness and simplicity. In a word, this line iscalm, just like the ocean.Line 2The tide is full, the moon lies fair• Here we get a little more description of the setting of this poem. It's high ("full") tide, the moon is out, and it's beautiful ("fair").• We've pointed out how the first line was self-contained, a complete thought in itself. In this line, the end of the line isn't the end of the sentence, and the phrase "the moon lies fair" isn't complete? It makes the reader want to know where the moon lies fair, or how. To find out, you have to continue to the next line. That poetic technique, where a sentence is broken up across more than one line, is called enjambment.• We also want to point out that little break in the middle of the line (marked by the comma). The line takes a pause here, between two complete phrases. That fancy little trick is called a caesura, and it divides the line into two parts.Line 3Upon the straits; on the French coast the light• That moon that's lingering from the last line? Well, it turns out that it "lies fair / Upon the straits." That just means that the moonlight is shining on a narrow body of water ("the straits"). The speaker tells us that he can see across the strait to the coast of France.• If we put this together with the title "Dover Beach," we get a pretty clear idea of where the speaker is. He's on the coast of England, looking out at the English Channel, which separates England from France. Dover is a town (you might have heard of its famous white cliffs) right at the narrowest point in the channel. The French town of Calais is just a little over twenty miles away, which is why he can see the light there.• Notice the enjambment in this line, too. Arnold keeps us rolling from line to line here, building up momentum in the beginning of the poem.Lines 4-5Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.• Suddenly the light that he saw shines out and then disappears (with Arnold's much prettier alliteration, it "Gleams and is gone"). • When the light in France disappears, the speaker looks back at his own coast. Here he sees the famous white cliffs of Dover, which are shining in the moonlight out in bay. The bay, he reminds us, is "tranquil." This picks up the image of calm water from line 1.• And once again we've got a the break in line 4. See how the line pauses at the semicolon, and then the speaker turns to a new thought? Yep, that's another caesura.Line 6Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!• Here we get a little more information about what's happening in the world of the poem. We learn that the speaker is indoors (in a room with a window). • We also find out that he's talking to someone who must be in the room with him—that's his audience.. We don't learn much about that person yet, but our speaker wants him or her to come to window to smell the "sweet" air.• The tone of the poem is still really calm. Adjectives like "tranquil" and "sweet" establish a relaxing, comforting mood here at the beginning of things.Lines 7-8Only, from the long line of sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,• Now, all of a sudden, we've got a little shift on our hands. As we look out with the speaker and his companion, he says "Only." (Here that means something like "But.") • Only what? What's the matter with this scene? Arnold is just beginning to build our expectation.• The speaker draws our attention to the edge of the water, and the surf ("the long line of spray"). Instead of looking at the beautiful landscape as a whole, we're looking at the specific point where the sea meets the land.• And check out that vivid image of the "moon-blanched land." Blanched means "whitened" —we might say "bleached." You know how bright moonlight can make the whole world look white? Well, that's what our speaker is talking about.Line 9Listen! you hear the grating roar• Before, we were imagining what this scene looked like. Now the speaker tells his companion (and us) to change the frame, to use one of our other senses.• Suddenly we're going to "Listen!" (that exclamation point is mean to wake us up) to the sound of the water. • Turns out that sound isn't "calm" or "tranquil" like the moonlight on the water. The speaker describes it as a "grating roar."• The harshness of the word "grating" might be a little surprising, since there's nothing relaxing about a grating sound. It seems to Shmoop that the atmosphere of this poem is changing. Let's keep a weather eye out for more shifts in the future.Lines 10-11Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At their return, up the high strand,• That "grating" sound from line? That comes from the sound of pebbles. Those little rocks are being pulled out by the waves as they go out, and then thrown back up on the beach ("strand" is another word for beach or shore) when the waves come back in.• وربما كنت قد سمعت هذا الصوت من قبل، مثل قعقعة إيقاعي، عملاقة في التنفس. ويركز المتكلم حقاً في على صوت الأمواج. أنه يريد منا أن يشعر حقاً القوة لا مفر منه، ومطرد. لأنه إذا كان شيء واحد في الصدارة بالتأكيد، أن الموجات سوف تواصل تحطم على شواطئ العالم كله على مدى.خطوط 12-13تبدأ، ووقف، وتبدأ مرة أخرى،مع إيقاع مرتعد بطيئا، وجلب• الصوت [غرتينغ] يبدأ الحصى، وتوقف بعد ذلك، وثم يبدأ مرة أخرى. المتكلم بطريقة أخرى لوصف هذا الإيقاع في المحيط. يسميه "مرتعد إيقاع بطيء." • دعونا كسر ذاك، هوة؟ "مرتعد" يعني هشة أو يرتجف. ونحن نعتقد أن يأتي من حقيقة أن هذا الصوت الكبير واحدة تتكون من العديد من الأصوات قليلاً من المتداول الحصى. "إيقاع" يشير إلى إيقاع أن تكرار الصوت. هذا كلمة كبيرة لاستخدامها في قصيدة من كل شيء، حيث إيقاع حاسمة بالنسبة لتجربة القراءة. يسمع المتكلم إيقاع بطيء في صوت الأمواج، وأنه يخلط مع إيقاع قصيدته.• وما هو مجرد إيقاع هذه القصيدة؟ حسنا، أرنولد يلعب مع ذلك قليلاً. المقياس الأساسي للقصيدة الايامبي، الذي له بنفس النوع من المتداول إيقاع كتلك الأمواج. • خط 12 فعلا مثال عظيم لأن: أندثين البدء، ووقف، تبدأ مرة أخرى. انظر؟ Pentameter الايامبي الكمال. • هذا ليس هو الحال في كل مكان على الرغم؛ أنه يبدل الأمور بأس به. لمزيد من المعلومات حول هذا، راجع قسم "نموذج ومقياس".Line 14
The eternal note of sadness in.
• Now the rubber really hits the road in this poem. We started out calm and tranquil, but the first stanza ends on a much darker note, with the introduction of a "note of sadness."
• We think the word "note" is pretty key here. It picks up on the word "cadence" up above, and makes us think that the sound of the world is something like music.
• This isn't just a temporary sadness, either. It's "eternal." Our speaker clearly thinks that the music of the world has an endless sadness built into it.
Lines 15-16
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
• Now the sound of the pebbles in the waves turns into a kind of time machine, and takes the speaker (and us) on a mental journey back to ancient Greece.
• He imagines the famous playwright Sophocles heard the same sound as he stood next to the Aegean Sea (that's the part of the Mediterranean that separates Greece from Turkey).
• This little allusion to the past keys us into Arnold's interest in the past, and especially classical Greece and Rome. It also creates a connection between the great poetic mind of Sophocles and our speaker. They are linked, across the centuries, by the act of listening to the sea and thinking about humanity.
Lines 17-18
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
• Sophocles was one of the great Greek authors of tragic plays—you know, those bummer dramas where everyone ends up dead or miserable? So it's probably not that surprising that the ocean makes him think of "the turbid ebb and flow of human misery." "Turbid" means "cloudy, stirred up, muddy and murky" and it's often used to refer to water.
• So, Sophocles is imagining an analogy between human unhappiness and cloudy water moving in and out ("the ebb and flow").
• Also, have you been keeping an eye on how much enjambment this poem has? This particular stanza (lines 15-20) is just one long sentence broken up over five lines. 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 easily have 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 18-19
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." By distant he just means far away from Sophocles and the Aegean.
• Just like Sophocles, "we" find a thought in the sound of the waves. Who's this "we," by the way? Line 17 is the first time the speaker has referred to we. Maybe he just means him and his companion (whom he invited to
يجري ترجمتها، يرجى الانتظار ..
