"Dover Beach"
By Matthew Arnold

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff at The University of Virginia, Tonya Howe

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Sources

London : Macmillan and Co., 1867This 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.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Arnold, Matthew. "Dover Beach". New Poems, Macmillan and Co., 1867 , pp 112-114 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Arnold/arnold-dover-beach. Accessed: 2024-12-21T17:20:30.977Z

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[TP] NEW POEMS

BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD

LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO.
M DCCC LXVII 112 DOVER BEACH. 1THE SEA is calm to-night, 2The tide is full, the moon lies fair 3Upon the Straits;--on the French coast, the light 4Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 5Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 6Come to the window, sweet is the night air! 7Only, from the long line of spray 8Where the ebb meets the moon-blanched sand, 9Listen! you hear the grating roar 10Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling, 11At their return, up the high strand, 12Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 13With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 14The eternal note of sadness in. 113 15Sophocles long ago 16Heard it on the AEgean, and it brought 17Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 18of human misery; we 19Find also in the sound a thought, 20Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 21The sea of faith 22Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 23Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd; 24But now I only hear 25Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 26Retreating to the breath 27Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear 28And naked shingles of the world. 29Ah, love, let us be true 30To one another! for the world, which seems 31To lie before us like a land of dreams, 32So various, so beautiful, so new, 114 33Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 34Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 35And we are here as on a darkling plain 36Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 37Where ignorant armies clash by night.