Sunday Pages: "Dover Beach"

A poem by Matthew Arnold

Dear Reader,

Many times on “Sunday Pages,” I’ve written about a poem that I didn’t like at first that I grew to appreciate later in life. Today, I’m going to do exactly the opposite. I’m going to share a poem that I really dug in my formative years, but now recognize as not just ho-hum, but actively opposed to those things I hold most dear: truth, hope, love, faith in humanity. In other words, it’s the Kyrsten Sinema of verse.

“Dover Beach” was written by the British poet Matthew Arnold around 1851. I first read the poem in college, 30 years ago, and I was much taken with its gravitas, its passionate intensity, it’s no-bullshit take on life—as well as its lovely depiction of an evening at the cliffs of Dover:

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.
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 Ægean, 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 furled.
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.

When I first read the poem, and for many years after, I thought that “Let us be true / To one another!” was a sort of proto-Springsteen-in-“Thunder-Road” call to this individual the narrator adores. I thought he was giving her an ardent pep talk: “Sure, the world is harsh, baby, but we have each other!” There was a romantic element to it that moved me.

Now, I read it differently. Now, I understand that “Let us be true / To one another!” is a euphemism for “Let’s dispense with the pretty lies and be honest!” After dropping that alarming caveat, our dour narrator launches into this depressing soliloquy about how everything sucks. Which, I mean, he does make some good points that are still urgently applicable. We are as on a darkling plain, we are swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, and as anyone who goes on Twitter well knows, ignorant armies really do clash by night—because night here is morning in St. Petersburg, where the troll farms live.

But ultimately, this joyless wet blanket of a poet’s got it backwards. The way the world seems to him—various, beautiful, new—is how it really is. There is joy, and love, and light, and certitude, and peace, and help for pain. Not constantly, but consistently, and dependably. Yes, bad things happen. Terrible, horrible things, all the time. But ultimately, love prevails. If it didn’t, we’d have gone extinct a long time ago.

Whether a Victorian poet, an emo pop star, or a Twitter blue-check, it’s easy to be Debbie Downer. All you have to do is point out the odds stacked against us as individuals and as a species, here on this fragile rock on the fringes of an entropic galaxy with the candy bar name. That misses the point of being human, of living life to the fullest, of appreciating the surfeit of beauty that surrounds us, of marveling at the incredible creativity, ingenuity, and diversity of homo sapiens. If we lose sight of the various and beautiful and new, and deny the existence of joy and love and light, we’ve already lost.

Also, if it’s a gorgeous night on the beach, and you’re there with your sexy soulmate watching the waves crash on the strand, and all you can think about is some long-dead Greek tragedian and how life blows, maybe it’s time to put down your fucking quill and get some therapy. Sophocles, my ass!

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Photo credit: John Mavin. The Shakespeare Cliff, Dover.