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Word Gems
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Matthew Arnold
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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 Ægean, 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.
from https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/matthew-arnold/dover-beach
"Dover Beach" is the most celebrated poem by Matthew Arnold, a writer and educator of the Victorian era. The poem expresses a crisis of faith, with the speaker acknowledging the diminished standing of Christianity, which the speaker sees as being unable to withstand the rising tide of scientific discovery. New research and intellectual inquiry cast doubt on humankind's central and special role in the universe. The speaker in the poem senses this change almost subconsciously, seeing and hearing it in the sea that the speaker is looking out upon. In its expression of alienation, doubt, and melancholy, the poem is often interpreted as a remarkably forward-thinking precursor to 20th century crises of faith—like Existentialism and Absurdism. In essence, the poem is an inquiry into what it means to be alive.
The speaker looks out upon a calm sea, and observes the fullness of the tide and the moon reflecting on the water. Looking across the English channel, the speaker sees the lights of the French coast fade away, while the cliffs of the English coast stand tall and bright, and the bay seems calm. Suddenly, the speaker addresses someone else, and implores this person to come and look at what the speaker is looking at, and to enjoy the night's pleasant air. The speaker senses something is not quite right, and describes the spray where the water meets the moonlit land. The speaker instructs the other person to listen to the sound of the pebbles as the waves shift them back and forth, up the beach and down again. The speaker notes this slow repeating action, and identifies it with eternal sadness.
All of a sudden, the speaker thinks about the ancient Greek playwright, Sophocles, and imagines Sophocles hearing the same sadness in the Aegean Sea as the speaker hears now on the English coast. Sophocles, in the mind of the speaker, likens the sad sound of the waves to the general sorrow of humanity, which moves like the waves. The speaker then notices another thought that comes with the sound of the sea.
Explaining this next thought, the speaker describes religious faith as a sea that was once full like the tide. At that time, it reached around the earth like a girdle. Now, though, the speaker just hears that sea's sad retreat. As the Sea of Faith becomes smaller, says the speaker, it disappears into the atmosphere and leaves the edges of the world naked.
The speaker suddenly addresses the companion as "love," and states desperately that the two of them need to treat each other with honesty and authenticity. This is because the world, though it has a dream-like quality of variety, beauty and newness, doesn't actually offer joy, love or clarity. Neither, claims the speaker, can it provide certainty, peace, or relief from pain. The speaker then compares their collective situation to standing on a flat and dark piece of land, which is caught up in the chaos of fighting. Here, battles between unknowing groups continue under the cover of darkness.
“Dover Beach” Themes
Theme Loss of Faith and Certainty
Loss of Faith and Certainty
Written during the Victorian era, Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” admits to and laments the loss of religious faith that came with advances in various fields at the time: evolutionary biology, geology, archeology, and textual analysis of the Bible, to name a few. The poem senses the turn of a historical epoch and finds this change echoed in the transitional figure of the beach—the blurry border between land and sea. The poem thus asks the reader to consider what is lost in humankind’s movement away from the (debatable) certainties of the Christian faith.
For the speaker, loss of faith equates to loss of certainty. The Dover beach itself seems to embody this loss, both in its sights and its sounds. At first, the poem offers no clues that its main subject is the loss of faith. Instead, it begins by describing the atmosphere in which the speaker stands. The descriptions of the sea and the sound of the pebbles on the beach are lyrically beautiful at first, but they mask “the eternal note of sadness” that is revealed at the end of stanza 1. This sudden intrusion of sadness hints at the speaker’s sense of loss, which finds fuller expression later in the poem. Through the symbol of the sea, the poem suggests two key ideas: firstly, that major shifts in the fabric of society occur subtly—the beach’s slow, repetitive movements symbolize the gradual but inevitable loss of faith that the speaker senses in this historical moment.
Secondly, mapping the loss of religious faith onto the movement of the waves implies that these kinds of historical changes come in cycles—waves, in other words. Indeed, the speaker imagines the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles hearing the same sadness in the sea that the speaker hears now. That is, the speaker sees an analogy between the irrelevance of the classical Greek Gods in the speaker’s time with the coming irrelevance of the Christian God in the near future. That doesn’t mean that religious faith will return, but more that something will come along to take its place (in this case, the dominance of science).
The speaker's position on this loss of religious faith becomes clear in the third stanza. Faith once made the world “full” and “bright”—that is, it offered comfort and joy in its certainty. Its loss, then, represents “melancholy.” What’s more, the “Sea of Faith” once touched the shores of the entire world, but is now “withdrawing.” The poem is essentially saying that this loss of faith is global, in turn suggesting the vast reach of scientific advancements at the time. The speaker doubles down on the idea that scientific advancement represents a loss rather than a gain in the poem’s final couplet, saying that the new era will herald “confused alarms of struggle and flight,” and “ignorant armies clash[ing] by night.” In other words, the speaker believes that scientific advancement will bring only scientific—not spiritual—certainty and will lead to more doubt and questioning (which is, in fact, an important part of the scientific method of inquiry). Overall, then, the poem expresses a kind of resignation. The speaker fully admits the change that is in process—it is as inevitable as the waves rising and falling—and challenges the reader to consider whether this loss of faith is progress or a wrong turn. “Dover Beach,” then, is a deeply pessimistic poem that questions the dominant values of its day and embodies the sense of grief that some felt at the prospect of the loss of religion. This questioning still stands up in the 21st century, calling on its readers to examine whether their own lives are spiritually fulfilled.
Theme Nature and Alienation
Nature and Alienation
Linked to the idea of a loss of faith is a shift in the way people relate to the natural environment. Written shortly after the era of the Romantic poets, who praised nature as an antidote to overly rational thinking, “Dover Beach” questions humankind’s relationship with nature. Instead of finding happiness or the sublime in the natural environment, the speaker finds a deep sense of sorrow (even while admitting to the beach’s beauty). The cold indifference and vast power of the natural world make the speaker feel small and insignificant. The poem is therefore an attempt to capture the complexity of human experience as just one part of the natural world, rather than its center.
Central to the poem is an implicit admission that mankind is merely one part of a larger system—the natural world. The natural scene prompts the speaker to think about timescales that make their own life seem less significant. The speaker looks out on a scene that is, on the one hand, beautiful, but on the other, a powerful reminder of nature’s indifference to humankind. The beach and the sea are by far the most prominent figures in the poem. As products of millions of years of erosion and water movement, they represent scales of time well beyond the expanse of human life, and perhaps beyond the mind’s capacity to comprehend them too.
This sense of deep time alienates the speaker from the natural scene that the speaker is observing. The scene makes the speaker feel small and creates a feeling that nature is almost antagonistic towards the trials of humankind, as demonstrated by the harsh sound of the beach, which “roars” with the “eternal note of sadness” as the pebbles move with the waves. The mention of eternity here specifically links the idea of time to the speaker’s alienation—without God to provide the certainty of eternal afterlife, the timescales evoked by nature seem almost mocking of humankind’s limited place in the world.
The speaker's thoughts about the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles further emphasizes the tragedy that the speaker believes is occurring. The speaker imagines Sophocles hearing the same loneliness and sorrow in the sea as the speaker does in the poem. For the speaker, human life is fundamentally sad—and Sophocles, as a writer of tragedies, must have heard that same sadness in the sea. On the one hand, then, the poem argues that nature has always had this alienating effect. But on the other hand, it also seems that the speaker is particularly mindful of the present moment, the moment when the poem was written—the use of present tense throughout demonstrates that the speaker feels that the current moment is an especially alienating time.
The natural setting of the poem, then, makes the speaker question everything about human existence, a state that was once made certain by religious faith. There is a paradoxical nature about the beach—it is always shifting in shape, yet it can stay roughly as it is for millions of years, seemingly always in transition and always the same. This paradox embodies the way in which people try to make sense of their lives while the world itself offers no certainty. In this way, the poem is a precursor of 20th century Existentialism and is often considered ahead of its time. Ultimately, “Dover Beach” exposes the underlying melancholy of awe-inspiring natural sites. While the speaker does admit to the scene’s beauty, that beauty doesn’t compensate for the way in which the scene makes the speaker feel small and insignificant.
Theme Love
Love
With the retreat of religion causing a crisis of spiritual faith, the speaker turns to love as an answer for the loss of God. Perhaps, the poem suggests, love between people can compensate for the loss of the connection between God and mankind. But the poem only argues that love has the possibility of creating the certainty that religion once did—it doesn’t make the case that this is inevitable.
It is generally agreed that Arnold wrote “Dover Beach” while on his honeymoon. Whether or not this is definitely true, the speaker is certainly not alone in the poem. The speaker’s interactions with an off-stage (off-page) lover demonstrate the possible restoration of a different kind of faith—in love, rather than in God. The first five lines of the poem give nothing away in terms of whether the speaker has an addressee (beyond the reader). But lines 6 and 8 offer clear instructions to the speaker’s companion to come and share the experience of looking out at Dover beach. Given that the beach scene inspires such melancholy in the speaker, the speaker's attempt to share the experience is an argument for intimacy and honesty between people. Togetherness, the poem argues, can help in any situation.
Stanzas 2 and 3, however, lack the direct address to the other person, and therefore seem to show the speaker retreating into their own psyche. The melancholy of the sea echoes the loss of religion, and almost swamps the speaker’s psyche entirely. But out of these depths comes the final stanza, which is spoken directly to the speaker’s lover. If the two lovers can be true to one another, suggests the speaker, then that will in part provide solace and certainty in a world that offers neither of these. The poem ends on a literal cliff-hanger, with the two lovers standing together—only the second time the poem uses “we”—awaiting what will come. Love, then, may be the only answer to the problems identified by the speaker: loneliness and loss of faith.
But the poem does not end on an optimistic note, casting doubt on the idea that love will save the day. Instead, the speaker anticipates confusion, struggle, and violence. Though love might not be able to defeat these, the speaker presents it as the only potential solution. Love, then, is definitely valued in the poem, and the reader in turn is asked to share in that value. But love shows up in only a few brief moments, leaving its meaning far from certain. The poem can’t say for sure that love will be able to make life meaningful, and perhaps even suggests that it ultimately can't—but it is presented as the best option, and worth trying.
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Dover Beach”
Lines 1-3
The poem begins with a deceptively simple and seemingly innocuous statement—that the sea is calm. The end-stop in line 1, combined with the simple vocabulary and regular iambic meter, makes the language feel calm too:
The sea | is calm | tonight.
The tide | is full, | the moon | lies fair
Upon | the straits |
The use of anaphora also contributes to this sense of quiet calm. The first three phrases all begin with "the" followed by a noun, setting up a gentle rhythm that mimics the slow movement of the waves.
Everything here suggests regularity—nothing is out of the ordinary. It also conjures a sense of simplistic beauty, bringing the speaker's vantage point to life. The consonant sounds, too, are gentle and have a meditative quality. The three "l" sounds in lines 1 and 2—"calm," "full," and "lies"—have a sleepiness to them, also helping to establish the sense of night that is important to the poem. Likewise, the "n" sounds between "tonight," "moon" and "upon" tell nothing of the speaker's internal struggle that is to come.
The reader, then, is lured into a poem that seems to be a description of a beautiful but ultimately uninteresting coastal scene. This is in part reflective of the speaker's initial state of mind, as the speaker looks out and perceives beauty in a natural scene. But this calm beginning is also part of the poem's strategy to evoke a movement from spiritual security to existential worry. The reader is meant to experience the speaker's thought processes in real time, and the first three lines gently draw the reader into this psychological world. Put another way, this opening lures the reader into a false sense of security which will unravel as the poem goes on, a strategy that mirrors the way that the poem chronicles a move away from faith and certainty towards doubt and anxiety.
Symbol The Sea
The Sea
The sea is a multi-functioning symbol that courses throughout the entire poem. At first, the sea is still and calm, creating a sense of security that the poem eventually undoes. But the speaker begins to observe the sea more closely, and notices that it is not as calm as it first seemed. The detail of their observation increases alongside the speaker's increasingly troubled psyche—the sound of the sea and the way it moves the pebbles becomes unnerving. In this sense, then, the sea is a symbol for the speaker's own inner thoughts.
The sea also functions as a representation of time. In the second stanza, the sea becomes a vehicle through which the speaker is mentally transported to ancient Greece. The body of water that covers the earth has always been there, and the speaker imagines Sophocles, the great Greek tragedian, reading the same symbol of misery in the sea as the speaker does. It's in part a symbol of the past, as well as the way the connections between humans across eras.
A third figurative use of the sea is in the speaker's concept of the "Sea of Faith." In its uniformity and far-reaching connectivity, the speaker reads a similarity to the way that religion once covered the world. The sea, then, is also a representation of the globe itself and religion's place within it.
“Dover Beach” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
Alliteration
Alliteration occurs throughout "Dover Beach."
In line 2, the "f" sounds of "full" and "fair" contribute to the opening's relaxed feel, tying in with the calmness of the sea.
In lines 4 and 5, the "gl" sounds tie together conceptually with light, the softness of the sound evoking the way the light is fading.
The "f" sound returns in "Faith," "full," "folds," and "furled" in the third stanza. The use of these many similar sounds suggests the way the "Sea of Faith" used to be "full," creating a sense of abundance and also mimicking the way that—in the speaker's view—faith used to reach far around the world. The poem withdraws these sounds after the conjunction of "But" in line 24, which moves the discussion on from how things used to be to how the speaker sees them to be now, changing the sound of the language to match.
Alliteration is also found in the final stanza. Line 31 links "l" sounds together across "lie," "like" and "land." The alliteration ties these three words together conceptually, playing on the double meaning of "lie:" the world both lies before the speaker and the speaker's "love" in the spatial sense, but it is also dishonest in its promise of variety, beauty and newness, as stated in the following line.
straits moon-blanched strand tremulous cadence Sophocles Aegean turbid ebb girdle furled drear shingles certitude Darkling
A strait is a naturally formed narrow waterway, in this case a reference to the English Channel that runs between England and France.
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Dover Beach”
Form
"Dover Beach" has been noted by many critics for its unusual form. The poem is highly irregular and does not fit with any specific poetic form, and as such is considered an early precursor of free verse and other 20th century experimentation with form.
The poem consists of four stanzas, each of different length. The first stanza is 14 lines, the second is 6, the third 8, and the fourth 9. The poem shows a speaker trying to grapple with a subject that they find difficult and not a little unnerving: humanity's loss of faith (in particular, the fading of Christianity). Accordingly, there is an instability to the speaker's psyche which expresses itself in numerous ways, including the poem's form. While much of Victorian poetry embodied principles of uniformity and strict obedience to form, this poem's departure from that rigidity signals a break with the past — which makes sense, given that the poem's subject is also focused on a rupture from the past brought on by new scientific learning that threatens and diminishes religious faith. As shown by the last stanza, in which the speaker predicts a new era of "confused alarms of struggle and flight" and "ignorant armies," the speaker senses that the times stand on a historical precipice, a transition point away from the certainties of faith to the skeptical rigor of science. The resistance of standard form embodies the speaker's fraught mental state, which is brought on by worry about what will happen to their society when it does away with the moral and spiritual reassurances of religion.
The use of stanza breaks follows the most significant developments in the speaker's mental journey, with each stanza focusing on a coherent set of thoughts:
Stanza 1 deals with the speaker's initial experience of the beach, which shifts from calmness to disquiet brought on by the sound of the moving pebbles.
Stanza 2 introduces Sophocles, as the speaker imagines ancient Greece and believes that the tragic playwright must also have experienced the same sort of pain and doubt that the speaker is experiencing now.
Stanza 3 develops the specific reason why the speaker hears such sadness in the sound of the sea: the loss of faith.
And stanza 4, finally, tries — without entirely succeeding — to build a defense against the future faithless world by professing the value of authentic love.
Meter
The meter in "Dover Beach" is highly unpredictable; any time a pattern seems to be establishing itself, it is soon disrupted. This unpredictability plays out both in the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables and in the lengths of the lines. For example, line 10 features iambic pentameter (five feet) whereas line 21 is a line of iambic dimeter (two feet). This restless variation is quite unusual for the Victorian time period in which the poem was written, and it contributes to the reader's real-time experience of the speaker's psyche, which is disturbed, worried, and — crucially — unpredictable.
At first, the poem appears to be establishing an iambic rhythm, even if the line lengths vary from the outset:
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;
These lines are highly regular, with the reliable shift from unstressed to stressed creating a gentle rocking motion in keeping with the discussion of the sea and its tides. But as line 3 continues, a kind of metrical battle begins, in which the iambic pattern tries to re-establish itself but is constantly disrupted:
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
"On the French coast" is a pyrrhic foot followed by a spondee, two unstressed syllables before two stresses. This is unusual in itself, but that it occurs in the middle of the line is doubly daring and lays down a metrical challenge to the iambic opening lines. This signifies the conflict going on in the speaker's psyche, between the outwardly beautiful scene and the symbolically troubling world it seems to represent to the speaker.
The final stanza embodies this tussle between iambs and irregularity too. Lines 33 and 34 are straightforwardly iambic, but lines 36 and 37 defeat this stability. Considering that these two lines introduce the idea of an uncertain future dominated by "confused alarms of struggle and flight" and "ignorant armies," metrical confusion plays a relevant role. The unreliability of the metrical pattern embodies the "confusion," "struggle" and "clash" that these lines discuss:
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The subject of the poem is about a rupture or breakage, as a world founded on faith is changed by the rise of science. That the meter of the poem itself seems ruptured underscores and amplifies the poem's subject.
Rhyme Scheme
Like other aspects of its form, the rhyme scheme in "Dover Beach" is erratic and unpredictable. It can't quite be said that there isn't a rhyme scheme—lines certainly do rhyme strongly—but they don't settle into an overall pattern.
For instance, technically speaking, the rhymes for the first stanza go as follows:
A
B
A
C
D
B
D
C
E
F
C
G
F
G
Every line rhymes with some other line in the stanza, but there doesn't seem to be an actual pattern of which line matches with which other line. The "rhyme scheme" of the poem, then, creates a conflict, between order and disorder, pattern and chaos. This confusion represents the speaker's psyche, which shows itself in tones that are sometimes measured (e.g. the opening of the first stanza) and at other times panicked (e.g. the opening of the final stanza). The speaker wants the world to make sense—and feels that religion once fulfilled this role. Now, however, with faith in retreat before the learnings of science, the speaker fears the future and its potential chaos. Reflecting the speaker's concerns, the use of rhyme occupies a similar transitional space—the rhymes are there, playing on the ear's recognition of pattern, but they don't fall into order.
One particular moment worth mentioning is in the final two lines of the poem. Here, the reader encounters the poem's only true couplet, as the speaker rhymes "flight" with "night." The sudden use of a couplet lends the lines a sense of finality, and helps the poem end on a deep sense of uncertainty. Both words have negative associations and in a way defeat the same rhyme from line 33—"light"—by coming as a pair. "Flight" speaks to fear," and "night" speaks to the loss of divine guidance.
“Dover Beach” Speaker
The speaker in the poem is often equated with Matthew Arnold. Though the poet certainly shared the speaker's concern with the loss of religious faith, there isn't enough in the poem to say that the speaker is Arnold, but it is fair to say that they at the very least have plenty in common.
In essence, the poem is a journey through the speaker's mind. At the beginning, it almost feels like the speaker is trying to write an entirely different poem, one which praises nature—a kind of night-time pastoral—using distant, descriptive language. But as the speaker looks and listens a little closer, suddenly everything changes. The speaker becomes overwhelmed by the "eternal note of sadness" that seems to linger in the sound of the sea lapping over the pebbles of the beach. The poem then becomes a mental journey through the speaker's psyche.
Stanza 2 gives the reader further insight into the speaker's intellectual perspective. The way in which the speaker suddenly thinks of Sophocles suggests that the speaker is an educated person—the classical allusion doesn't seem forced, but rather seems to have occurred quite logically according to the speaker's inner mentality.
Stanza 3 demonstrates that the speaker is also deeply religious, and that the speaker fears society's loss of faith. Perhaps, too, there is a sense that the speaker's own faith is diminishing or even already gone. For the speaker, this change leaves the world vulnerable and confusing—without the light of God, the world will be left "naked" and exposed.
Stanza 4 represents the speaker's take on the future. Without faith, the speaker sees the world as a "land of dreams"—that is, an illusion. It contains none of what is supposed to make life worth living—joy, love, beauty—because there is no longer spiritual certainty. This lack of certainty destabilizes man's place in the world, and this is why the speaker hears sadness—not beauty—in the sea.
Finally, it's important to note that the speaker is not alone. Rather, the speaker has a companion—just off-stage/off-page—who never speaks. Three times in the poem, though, the speaker directly addresses this companion. The last of these is the most telling. Lines 29-30 show that the speaker believes that love might provide a solution to the problem of the loss of faith, but that only a love that is authentic and true can hope to fill the gap created by a loss of faith.
“Dover Beach” Setting
The setting for the poem is two-fold. First, there is the literal setting as suggested by the title: Dover Beach. Dover is on the southeastern coast of England and is a major port. The cliffs that the speaker mentions are largely chalk, meaning that they are white, which is what makes them glimmer in the moonlight. They also have a sheer drop, with the coastline ending abruptly and giving way to the sea. The sea that the speaker looks out upon is the English channel, which divides England from France (which is why the speaker can initially see France across the water). The setting also embodies the speaker's psychological conflict that develops throughout the poem. The scene is outwardly beautiful—the cliffs are very impressive—but there is also a sense of vague threat. Because England is an island nation, anyone wanting to attack it (before the time of air travel) would have to arrive by sea and land at the coast.
The beach itself is a transitional space. That is, while to the casual observer a beach might look the same from one year to the next, it is constantly undergoing change—subtle differences are made each time the waves come in and recede. Likewise, the beach is the point where land meets the sea; it is a kind of in-between zone, at which it is difficult to say where land ends and sea begins. This is important to the poem, because the speaker is expressing worry about a similarly transitional moment in history. As the speaker sees it, society (and perhaps humankind more generally) is moving from faith to a science-based understanding of the world. The intellectual and spiritual life of the world is in transition. The transitional nature of the beach therefore makes the speaker think more deeply about faith, and change, and loss, and love.
With that in mind, then, there is another sense in which the poem's setting is the speaker's psyche itself. The reader goes along on the speaker's mental journey, from calmness, to doubt, to love for another, to sadness and worry for the future.
Literary and Historical Context of “Dover Beach”
Literary Context
"Dover Beach" was first published in 1867, though it is generally believed to have been written around the time of Matthew Arnold's honeymoon in 1851. It is a stand-out poem in the Victorian canon, and often claimed to be the greatest poem of the era. Partly, this is because it is so different from the other poetry of its day. Poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson (the poet laureate of England) and Robert Browning wrote with strict formality—indeed, much of Arnold's other poetry is similar to theirs—but this poem stands out in its refusal to settle down into a reliable shape or pattern. In this sense, the poem is a precursor to literary movements of the 20th century—to the innovations of Modernism and, in its fraught psychology, the spiritual doubt of Existentialism. Thomas Hardy's poetry probably comes closest to expressing similar concerns, in particular the close look at the fading of faith in the blinding light of scientific advancement. Another useful comparison is with William Wordsworth's poem "Tintern Abbey." In that poem, the natural environment provides the speaker with a sense of "tranquil restoration," in keeping with the generally positive associations of nature in Romantic poetry. In Arnold's poem, the sea does the opposite, ushering in a sense of deep, even eternal sadness and melancholy.
Historical Context
Though the poem never explicitly mentions its historical context, apart from the vague reference to a prior era in which the Sea of Faith was abundant, most critics agree that the particular intellectual, spiritual and social moment in which it was written is key to its understanding. The poem expresses fear and anxiety about the loss of faith, and the historical context explains where this comes from. The 19th century in England was a time of significant changes in the way humankind saw itself in the world. For example, Charles Lyell's innovations in the study of geology had suddenly cast an almost undeniable doubt over the alleged timescales of the world's creation as described by the Bible. Similarly, Mary Anning—known as the "fossil lady"—had made discoveries of bizarre skeletons in the beach areas of southern England (which, like the poem's geographical position, look out over the English Channel), adding to that sense of doubt. Advances in evolutionary biology had unsettled the idea of man as the center of a universe created by God. In summary, Arnold was writing in a time of large-scale readjustment and anxiety. The poem gives expression to this mindset, ending on a fearful note about what the future holds.
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