Dover Beach

In “Dover Beach,” sorrow is as unrelenting as the waves crashing on the shore. In fact, the poem draws an equivalency between these waves and sorrow. In the first stanza, the speaker spends more lines describing the waves than he does anything else, but he doesn’t describe how the waves look; instead, he describes how they sound. The waves are dragging pebbles up and down the shore. The speaker doesn’t provide an image of the waves flecked with pebbles, and he doesn’t describe the impression the wave-dragged pebbles leave on the sand. From his position high above the beach and in the dark of night, it’s unlikely he can see these things. Instead, he describes the waves sonically. The waves pulling the pebbles across the sand produce a “grating roar” (Line 9) that has a languid, “tremulous cadence” (Line 13). The first stanza rhymes repeatedly, but haphazardly, with abacdbdcecgfg. Although these rhymes don’t follow a fixed rhyme-scheme, more often than not, they alternate—aba, dbd, cec, and gfg are all alternating rhymes. These rhymes mimic the waves which also alternate: “Begin, and cease, and then again begin” (Line 12). Like the rhymes, the sounds of the waves are unrelenting but not metronomically precise. Once the speaker sets up this equivalence between the sound of the waves and the sound of the poem, he tells us the waves “bring / [t]he eternal note of sadness in” (Lines 13-14). The waves in the poem and the rhymes that mimic them are, therefore, sad. They bring the sadness in to the shoreline, but they also bring that sadness into the speaker, thus projecting waves of sadness inward to match the outward ebb and tide.

This sadness continues in Stanza 2, where we are told Sophocles heard the same sound and “[…] it brought / Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery […]” (Lines 16-18). Thus, the equivalence between the “ebb and flow” (Line 17) of the waves and sadness—or “misery” (Line 18)—persists. The second stanza, like the first, also rhymes somewhat haphazardly, but in an alternating way: hihjij. Therefore, the rhymes of the second stanza continue to mimic the waves, and the speaker tells us once again they both embody sadness.

The third stanza persists with waves and sadness, but now the waves are metaphorical. The waves no longer come from a literal sea but from the “Sea of Faith” (Line 21). The rhymes of this stanza do not alternate as much, instead the third stanza rhymes even more haphazardly than the first two: kelmeon. This is because the “Sea of Faith” is “withdrawing” (Lines 21, 25). The implication is it will never return. Therefore, the poem is no longer describing a back-and-forth ebb and flow. Instead, it’s describing a profound and permanent loss. Thus, the rhymes no longer alternate. Arguably, this is sadder than the stanzas before.

The final stanza presents a solution to the inconstancy of the world: “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another” (Lines 29-30). This is the only source of truth possible in life because the world

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 (Lines 33-37).

In one sense, this ending is a hopeful note. The speaker has found truth in a profoundly confused world. Also, the rhymes become more regular and sustained. The final stanza rhymes: oppoaqqaa. The rhymes of the final stanza embody more constancy than those of the stanzas before. The speaker, however, has put a great deal of pressure on his romantic relationship. If one lover cheats on the other, this will plunge them into the confusing, chaotic battle: “Where ignorant armies clash by night” (Line 37). Also, the fact that the final lines of the final stanza (aa) also rhyme with the first line indicates that the poem ends in the same place it started.