Dover Beach

Personally, I believe that “Dover Beach” is predominately a meditative poem. After reading the poem and researching it, I think that Arnold is probably using the poem to explain his feelings about the widespread belief that Darwin and other scientists may be right, and that perhaps there was a scientific reason that led to the creation of earth. Being a highly religious person, Arnold uses the stanza:

“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”

to explain his feeling that faith is becoming something of the past. Whereas once, people founded a new nation based on their religious beliefs, now they are beginning to accept that science may play a part in the formation of the earth.  This stanza seems to say that although once faith in God was as abundant as the sea, now it is slowly fading away from the lips of those who were once firm believers. No longer are people proclaiming their belief in an unseen God, but are now focusing on the newly discovered scientific notions of Darwin and others.

In the last stanza of the poem, he mentions love, personifying it, but I don’t really think the poem is a love poem. He is simply stating that if the world was created by “the big bang,” that there is no hope, no joy, and no use in dreaming of awaking in a paradise created by God. Rather, ignorance will lead to the two factions, believers and scientists, fighting over which thought is the truth. Is it really worth holding on to the faith of an unseen God?