“Sea is life“ Dover Beach is a very mood-evoking poem. We are first met with
an admiration for the sea and different emotions that draws to the observer.
However, as the poem progresses we are gradually introduced to a large metaphor
for love and like the sea are able to evoke many moods, and different emotions,
whether prosperous or decayed. The poet describes the emotions with extreme
passion and perhaps with slight hysteria. We are given as sense of loss by this
turmoil, which becomes clearer in the last stanza. The title of this poem,
“Dover Beach”, really sets the scene to the reader almost instantly. The
beach, with its white cliffs, help give the readers a sense of dominance and
magnificence. The poet may have done this as to set the mood for the opening
stanza. For others it may provoke a thought or memory of the past such as the
childhood holidays with your parents. The lines in the poem could be provoking
these thoughts so that you can empathize later to what he is experiencing in the
poem. The title itself however, does not give you any emotional insight into the
poem. I feel the poet did this as to not alert the reader to what is going
happen in further in the poem. The poems opening stanza is to begin with very
soft and peaceful, “The sea is calm tonight”(Line 1). The words the poet
uses are pleasing such as “Gleams, sweet, glimmering”(Line 4, 6,5). The mood
for the poem is being set. The reader is filled with visions of peace and a
sense of being content “sweet is the night air!”(Line 6). However, the mood
of the poem dramatically changes. The poet begins to use words, which changes
the mood and are vastly different from the previous lines, “roar, slow,
sadness”(Line 9, 13, 14). This sudden emotional change to me is a symbol of
his love or life. Once the poet’s life was calm like the seas in the opening
line. The poet’s life has no changed into turmoil of emotions, which are
charged like the sea “the waves draw back, and fling, At their
return/”(Lines 10-11). The first stanza is explaining the sudden change in
mood in the poem that is very similar to the changing mood of the sea. In the
second stanza we are actually able to learn more of the poets analogy. The poet
believes that the noise of the sea can bring in the “flow of human
misery”(Line 18). This is what he claims happened to Sophocles. This analogy
is perhaps what also happened to the poet’s life. The calm sea turned into a
continual warning swash in his soul which brought with it misery. However the
last line of the stanza tells us that this noise does not bring with it just
human misery but also a thought, that the poet does not elaborate this theory so
we are left to assume this changes from person to person. “in the sound a
thought”(Line 19). The sea again in the third stanza represents his loss of
faith. This loss of faith is elaborately described as disappearing in the nights
wind ”to the breath of the night-wind”(Lines 26-27). Here the poet builds up
a clear picture of the wind being personified, “to the breath”(Line 26) and
taking this faith down to the “vast edges”(Line 27), and with it also the
“naked shingles of the world”(Line 28). This idea of naked shingles is
perhaps how the poet feels himself to be. He isolates himself from anyone else.
He is left bare naked to have all of his ideals taken away from him by the
simple element the wind. By using the different moods of the sea, calm and
powerful, the poet is able to make a connection to life. The way the sea
continuously bashes, hurling rocks up against the sand, gives us a sense of
relentlessness of some emotional strain on his life, “ Begin, and cease, and
then again begin”(Line 12). The final stanza is an incorporation of the whole
poem, as well as confirming to the reader what it is the poet is trying to
explain. The final stanza, begins like that of the opening stanza, using a very
appealing, gentle opening, as well as words to support this, “ love, true,
dreams, beautiful and new”(Lines 29, 31, 32). However, again like the stanzas
preceding it, the mood changes again, which tries to tell us that no matter what
happens, whether we are true, or in love, we will never understand this beauty
of the sea. The poet helps to give an understanding to the reader that the sea
is one element that one can never understand and so is life itself. This poem
was fantastic in expressing what the poet is expressing from his heart.