How Does The Sound Of The Poetry Contribute To Its Meaning?

An Image is a poetic description of something. It forms by simulated sense organs and quickened people’s imagination. One of the images is sound. In the “Dover beach” Matthew Arnold also used many sounds. In first stanza, “Listen! You hear the grating roar / Of pebbles which the waves drawback, and fling/ At their return, up the high strand/ Begin, and cease, and then again begin.” In these four lines the poet tries to create the rhythm of the waves rush across the pebbles, then drawback, and then break again. These cause an emotion of sadness in him. And also create the onomatopoeia of the pebbles as they move about under pressure from the incoming and outgoing waves. Also in the first stanza, “Begin, and cease, and then again begin/ With tremulous cadence slow, and bring/ The eternal note of sadness in.” The sound of the sea reminds the poem of the “eternal of the sadness.” Because the sound of the sea is very slow, repeat begin and cease. So the sound of the sea is eternal. In second stanza “Sophocles long ago/ Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought/ In to his mind the turbid ebb and flow/ Of human misery; we.” The Sophocles was sitting on the seashore and considering human life, it would be affected him by the sea’s melancholy sound.

Taken as whole the author wants to appear melancholy, dark and sadness sounds to evoke

the readers emotions.

grating . . . .pebbles: Here, grating (meaning rasping, grinding, or scraping) introduces conflict between the sea and the land and, symbolically, between long-held religious beliefs and the challenges against them.

At first, it is beautiful to look at in the moonlight (ll.1-8), then it begins to make antagonistic sounds (“grating roar” (l. 9); “tremulous cadence” (l.13)) that evoke a general feeling of sadness. In the third stanza, the sea is turned into a metaphoric “Sea of Faith” (l.21) – a symbol for a time when religion could still be experienced without the doubts brought about by progress and science (Darwinism). Now, the ‘Sea of Faith’ and thus the certainty of religion withdraws itself from the human grasp and leaves only darkness behind.

Are there key statements or conflicts in the poem that appear to be central to its meaning?

The major conflict that is apparent throughout thenovel is the author’s disappointment in people’s dwindling faith. Key statements and conflicts appear to interpretation and theme. In “Dover Beach” he focused on the change in human faith. In the first stanza, “Listen! You hear the grating roar/Of pebbles which the waves drawback, and fling.” These lines contain conflict between the land and the sea, between long-held religious beliefs and the challenges against them. At first, the sea is beautiful to look in first stanza but it begins to make antagonistic sounds. And “tremulous cadence” evoke a feeling of melancholy. In the third stanza, “ Sea of Faith” is a symbol for re

Here he tries to make people think of the need of faith, and how we as human being have compensated faith for materials.

The “darkling plain” of the final line has been described as Arnold’s “central statement” of the human condition.