Dover Beach: Important Quotes Explained

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.

These lines (lines 9–14) close the first stanza, and they mark the first major turn in the speaker’s thoughts. The turn parallels a shift in the speaker’s awareness of the environment, as well as a shift in his emotional state. The poem’s opening lines emphasize the tranquility of the sea, which is still enough that “the moon lies fair / Upon the straits” (lines 2–3). The calmness of the sea also reflects the speaker’s apparent stillness of mind. With the word “Listen,” however, the speaker indicates a new sensation, which leads to a new train of thought. The previous moment of stillness had coincided with the full tide. But now, as the full tide begins ebbing away and the waves drag the pebbles along the beach, the action creates a “grating roar” with a “tremulous cadence slow” that strikes the speaker as profoundly melancholy. The sea grows increasingly restless, as does the speaker’s mind.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

Lines 21–23 open the third stanza, and they introduce the theme of religion’s waning influence. The speaker’s reference to the “Sea of Faith” marks the strongest departure yet from his actual environment, indicating a further movement into his psyche. Whereas he begins the poem with a naturalistic description of Dover Beach, here he transposes the actual English Channel with a metaphorical “sea” that represents the Christian religion. To make matters more complicated, the speaker goes on to involve his metaphorical “Sea of Faith” in a dense simile. He describes this “sea” as having once been full, with the water surging closely “round earth’s shore,” much like clothing—i.e., “the folds of a bright girdle”—might be tightly gathered to a body. The speaker leaves this simile there, perhaps not wanting to imagine the metaphorical “body” of faith undressing itself as the tide washes out, leaving faith destitute among “the naked shingles of the world” (line 28). In a poem otherwise dominated by relatively simple language, this complicated mixing of metaphor and similar represents a significant moment in which the speaker gets caught up perhaps too much in his own thoughts.

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.

These lines (lines 29–34), which open the fourth and final stanza, introduce a powerful moment of ambiguity into the poem. The speaker directly addresses his offstage beloved, asking her to pledge her faithfulness to him in an otherwise unfaithful world. On the surface, the address to his beloved sounds earnest, as if he really believes that their love could survive in a world that merely “seems . . . like a land of dreams.” However, given the relentless pessimism articulated in the final four lines of the quoted passage, the reader might feel that the speaker’s cynicism nullifies his apparent belief in the power of love. In other words, the call for him and his lover to “be true / To one another” may be nothing more than a conventional idea—that is, the kind of romantic utterance that works well in a poem, but which can’t stand up to the cruel actuality of the real world.

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

The speaker concludes the poem with lines 35–37, which offer a pessimistic and even disturbing image of the human condition. He utters these words immediately after he has asked his beloved to remain true to him in an otherwise faithless world. Here, he uses a simile to paint a more detailed picture of the destitute world he and his beloved are living in. The world, he says, is like “a darkling plain,” which suggests a flat and desolate landscape that is either falling into darkness or else has already been pitched into night. Furthermore, a war is being fought out on this plain, the darkness of which causes confusion even amidst the clashing of arms. It is this image of confused armies fighting it out in profound darkness that the speaker ultimately likens to the human condition. The “darkling plain” therefore symbolizes a world where ignorance, chaos, and meaningless brutality reign.