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“Dover Beach” is a 37-line lyric poem in which an anonymous speaker contemplates the human condition on the shore of the English Channel. The term “lyric” refers to any poem with a first-person speaker whose speech expresses their state of mind. Lyric poems tend to be relatively short, and they often explore the unfolding process of the speaker’s perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. This definition nicely describes “Dover Beach,” which Matthew Arnold likely wrote in 1851. In this poem, the speaker speaks from his first-person perspective, and he tracks his experience as it unfolds in real time. He begins simply, by describing the calm sea and the glimmering reflection of moonlight on water. But as he listens to the waves, the speaker grows pensive. His thoughts turn to the Greek dramatist Sophocles, who likened the sound of the tides to human misery. He then laments the waning of religion. Finally, he asks his beloved, who is standing nearby, to promise to remain faithful to him in the face of a loveless and uncaring world. Throughout the poem, Arnold underscores the speaker’s crisis of faith by employing a variable meter and rhyme scheme. The unpredictability of both reflects the increasing uncertainty of life in a time of great spiritual unmooring.

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