Conveniently, Arnold specifies the poem’s setting in the title. Dover Beach is a famous coastal site renowned for its distinctive white cliffs. It overlooks the English Channel and faces the French port city of Calais. A notable feature of the beaches in this part of England is that, instead of being covered in sand, they are scattered with pebbles. This detail has significance for the poem. When the tide surges on the beach, the waves drag the pebbles along and cause the “grating roar” (line 9) that, for the speaker, sounds an “eternal note of sadness” (line 14). It is this disturbing noise that eventually draws his mind to misery of the human condition. Although Dover Beach is a very specific place, its importance in the poem derives less from its distinctive features than from its symbolic status as a space of constant flux. The speaker does open the poem by describing the naturalistic features of the beach. However, as he grows increasingly preoccupied with the shifting tide of his own thoughts, Dover Beach recedes into the background and becomes little more than a projection screen for the speaker’s mind.