Dover Beach

            We recently saw “My Oxford Year,” a movie that English majors will enjoy, in which the main character quotes the end of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” and is told by her professor/lover that the poem is the most depressing poem in the English language. Perhaps. But “Dover Beach” is also said to be the best short poem in English. I’m not sure how people came up with that rating – presumably by surveying college English professors. I do know that I have not written a better poem.

 

            Anyway – here it is: (You have my permission to skip the poem, though you don’t need my permission, and it will be your loss.)

 

Dover Beach

            by Matthew Arnold (1867)

 

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-blanched land,
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.

 

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

 

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

 

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

 

            Sad stuff, indeed! “The turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery . . ..” The only solace that the poem offers is, “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” The world sucks – Big Time! – and the best we can hope for is fidelity: No screwing around!

 

            When I reread the poem a couple of days ago, what struck me was something different. Kim and I have a real sense that the world is going to hell – from the wars to politics to global warming to gun violence to the difficulty in getting someone to answer the phone. So, at least, do what you can to cultivate and grow your closest personal relationships – your spouse, your lover, your BFF. I think about this as our neighbors here are all fleeing the coming Michigan winter, and it will be pretty much,  except for Kim’s telephone conversations, the two of us on our own.

 

            Which brings me to the core issue: What does it mean to be “true” to one another? It has to go deeper than simple sexual fidelity – not an issue at our age. My dictionary includes, as part of the definition of true, “conformable to an essential reality.” I don’t know about “conformable,” but the key is “essential reality.” Two people who are being “true / To one another” are presenting and acknowledging each other’s “essential reality.”

 

            No bullshit. Speak from the heart, and listen with your heart. Easier said than done, especially for a guy, as I am sometimes reminded . . ..