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Simile

“Dover Beach” features two prominent examples of simile (SIH-muh-LEE), which is a figure of speech that explicitly compares two unlike things to each other, using the words “like” or “as.” The first simile appears in the third stanza, when the speaker introduces the metaphorical “Sea of Faith”:

     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)

This complex simile compares the tides to clothing. The basic sense of the speaker’s words is as follows: “The Sea of Faith used to be full, and the water hugged the shore closely like the folds of a garment gathered close to a body.” Although the speaker doesn’t explicitly pursue the comparison further, an echo of his simile reappears at the end of the stanza. There, he describes the water of the Sea of Faith “retreating, to the breath / Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear / And naked shingles of the world” (lines 26–28). The Sea of Faith used to be full of water and hence “fully clad.” Now, however, with all its water gone, its bare sea bottom lies “naked” and exposed. The poem’s second simile is much more straightforward. It occurs when the speaker compares the world to “a darkling plain” (line 35), where falling darkness plunges everything into chaos.

Metaphor

Arnold uses metaphor to powerful effect in “Dover Beach.” The central metaphor of the poem emerges in the first and second stanzas. As the speaker listens to the “grating roar” (line 9) of the waves crashing on the beach, he hears an “eternal note of sadness” (line 14). This observation closes out the first stanza. In the second stanza, the speaker makes a logical leap that links his observation to a remark made by an ancient Greek playwright, who likened the tides of the sea to “the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery” (lines 17–18). It is here that the poem’s central metaphor emerges most clearly: that is, the ocean tides become a metaphor for the turbulence of the human condition. Another metaphor appears in the following stanza, where the speaker describes the “Sea of Faith.” The Sea of Faith is not a real sea but a metaphorical one. The speaker describes how this “sea” has ebbed away, much like the tide at Dover Beach. The dropping waterline in the metaphorical Sea of Faith symbolizes the diminishing influence of Christianity in the nineteenth century.

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, usually made without explicit identification. Arnold makes several allusions in “Dover Beach.” In the second stanza, for instance, Arnold references Sophocles, an ancient Greek tragedian who once perceived the cries of human misery in the crashing waves of the Aegean Sea. Although the speaker explicitly names Sophocles, he doesn’t directly reference the play Antigone, where he made his observation about the human condition. A less obvious literary allusion appears in the opening stanza, when the speaker first addresses his beloved: “Listen! you hear the grating roar” (line 9). This line references the following line from poem by the British Romantic poet William Wordsworth: “Listen! the mighty Being is awake.” The final allusion in the poem appears in the closing lines, where the speaker likens the world to 

     a darkling plain
     Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
     Where ignorant armies clash by night. (lines 35–37)

In a general sense, Arnold may be alluding to armed conflicts that had occurred in his lifetime. More specifically, though, he’s referring to an event related by the Greek historian Thucydides in The Peloponnesian War, when the Athenian army invaded Sicily at night. In the confusion of darkness, the Athenian soldiers accidentally killed many of their own men.

Enjambment

Many lines in “Dover Beach” are enjambed (en-JAMMED), meaning that they run over to the next without stopping at the end. Enjambment is a device that helps to vary rhythm and pace in poetry. End-stopped lines tend to enforce a sense of rhythmic regularity and maintain an unvarying pace. By contrast, when language runs over the line break, it generates a sense of flow that suggests acceleration. In “Dover Beach,” Arnold uses a mix of end-stopped and enjambed lines to create different rhythmic effects that reflect the speaker’s shifting mood. Consider the poem’s opening lines. Here, Arnold uses enjambed and end-stopped lines, along with midline pauses called “caesurae” (say-ZHOO-ree), to mimic the gentle rolling of an otherwise tranquil sea:

     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. (lines 1–5)

Note how, even with the enjambment in lines 2 and 3, the use of midline punctuation prevents the flow of language from speeding up too much. Compare this regulated pace to the more obvious overflow of language brought on by enjambment later in the poem:

     Sophocles long ago
     Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
     Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
     Of human misery. (lines 15–18)

With only one piece of punctuation to regulate the flow, these enjambed lines mimic the accelerating movement of the speaker’s agitated mind.

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