Analysis of Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold 1822 (Laleham) – 1888 (Liverpool)
The sea is calm to-night.
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-blanch'd 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 {AE}gean, 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 furl'd.
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.
Scheme | ABACDBDCEFCGFG HIHJIJ XEAXEXBX KLLKAMMAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011111 01110111 0101101101 1011011101 10001100101 1101011011 10101111 10110111 10110101 1101011101 11011011 0101010101 110010101 001011100 100101 111011011 011101101 1101001 11000101 1011110101 0111 1111010111 1101101101 111101 110010101 010101 1011101101 01010101 111111 1101010111 1101110111 1100110011 1101011111 110111111 011111011 11010111001 110010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,364 |
Words | 260 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 14, 6, 8, 9 |
Lines Amount | 37 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 269 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 64 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 20, 2023
- 1:18 min read
- 242 Views
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