Matthew Arnold

Someone cut off Tennyson, please. I hate to put you in your place, Lord Alfred, but my poem “Dover Beach” is just as popular (if not more) than anything you’ve written. Plus, I have some deeper philosophical ideas than you do. I was known for my philosophical essays, and my poetry. When did you ever write an essay, huh? What are we talking about again…oh, who’s the greenest writer? OK, sorry, Tennyson just riles me up sometimes.

Well, I think I should at least be considered for the greenest writer of the Romantic and Victorian periods. I will quote a few passages from “Dover Beach” and you all can decide for yourselves. At the beginning of this poem, I talk about the sights and sounds of water rushing onto the beach.

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the wave 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 (Arnold 1368, ll. 9-14)

I think I do a pretty good job here of using repetition to create the sound of the water coming up onto the beach again and again. Just say the words “Begin, and cease, and then again begin”. Do you hear those “n” sounds…that’s another poetic device – consonance. The repetitive words and the repetitive sounds (consonance) helps the reader create an image of waves endlessly crashing along the seashore. Sorry if I seem like too much of an English teacher for you right now – education was a big part of my life. I just wanted to explain how I was very careful with my words to create specific sounds and images. Isn’t that the best way to show your appreciation for nature?

I think another section of “Dover Beach” also shows how I connected the world to human emotions, such as love. This may be construed in many ways, but couldn’t you not also take an environmentalist interpretation of these lines:

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 (Arnold 1368, ll. 29-32)

I think these lines show how the world is a metaphor for happiness, for a land of dreams. The various parts of nature must assuredly be protected, and I think my “Dover Beach” poem illustrates that very well. I will let you readers decide, though.