Page 366 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 30: Tennyson, Arnold and Yeats

approach in Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”.) Culler himself views “Ulysses” as a dialectic Notes
in which the speaker weighs the virtues of a contemplative and an active approach to life; Ulysses
moves through four emotional stages that are self-revelatory, not ironic: beginning with his rejection
of the barren life to which he has returned in Ithaca, he then fondly recalls his heroic past, recognizes
the validity of Telemachus’ method of governing, and with these thoughts plans another journey.

30.2 Mathew Arnold: Dover Beach

This is a poem about a sea and a beach that is truly beautiful, but holds much deeper meaning than
what meets the eye. The poem is written in free verse with no particular meter or rhyme scheme,
although some of the words do rhyme. Arnold is the speaker speaking to someone he loves. As the
poem a progress, the reader sees why Arnold poses the question stated above, and why life seems to
be the way it is. During the first part of the poem Arnold states, “The Sea is calm tonight” and in line
7, “Only, from the long line of spray”. In this way, Arnold is setting the mood or scene so the reader
can understand the point he is trying to portray. In lines 1-6 he is talking about a very peaceful night
on the ever so calm sea, with the moonlight shining so intensely on the land. Then he states how the
moonlight “gleams and is gone” because the “cliffs of England” are standing at their highest peaks,
which are blocking the light of the moon. Next, the waves come roaring into the picture, as they
“draw back and fling the pebbles” onto the shore and back out to sea again. Arnold also mentions
that the shore brings “the eternal note of sadness in”, may be representing the cycles of life and
repetition. Arnold then starts describing the history of Sophocles’s idea of the “Aegean’s turbid ebb
and flow”.

30.2.1 Text of Dover Beach

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, 10
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 Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,

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