"Dover Beac" analysis

"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold is a topical poem written during the 19th century. The poem describes the inevitable rise and fall of the tide and the wearing away of the beach, a process that has gone on since the dawn of man and continues forever even as civilizations rise and fall. It then directly relates the sea to Faith, showing the disillusionment in faith that many Victorian era poets were facing, as they lost …

…in amber, knowledge of which is an essential precondition for love. Both the world and the armies that "clash by night" are ignorant. Arnold does not mean that love does not exist, but that it comes only from a partner who, unlike the world, can share the exquisite perception and resolution such as Arnold describes in "Dover Beach." Knowledge, shaped by the well-educated imagination, leads to understanding, understanding to empathy, and empathy to "true love."