When was dover beach written

See, in the decades before he wrote this poem, England had gone through rapid industrialization, which in many ways upended a way of life that had been stable for centuries.

The British empire was beginning to expand its reach across the globe, and the conflicts that would come with that expansion were picking up steam as well. In other words, Arnold was a man on the brink between the old world and the new, right on the edge of the modern era, and he has a really cool, visionary sense of what that means.

It's still included in anthologies and memorized by school kids today, almost years after it was published in Why that staying power? Well, we think this poem does a brilliant job of capturing just how lonely it can be to live in the modern world. You know what we're talking about. As family ties rupture, as old systems of faith diminish, it's easy to feel as if we've been abandoned on "a darkling plain" 35 without friends or hope.

What's cool about this poem is that it both describes this suffering and helps to make it better. It tackles the pain and the uncertainty of living in the modern world, but does it in a way that leaves us feeling like poetry can still matter, even in our times.

In that way, Arnold fuses the literary tradition he loved with the new world that he could see coming—the one we're living in right now. We're all for poems that talk about the happy stuff like love and birds and trees and taking a nap okay, maybe we don't know of any nap poems, but you get the idea. At the same time, that's not all poetry can do. It can also tackle the rough stuff in life, like pain and fear and suffering and loss. The speaker of this poem just flat out tells us that we shouldn't expect life to be full of "joy" or "love" He wants to shake us awake, to tell us that, in the world we live in now there is no certainty, no "help for pain" Dover Beach is a poem that offers the reader different perspectives on life, love and landscape.

Arnold chose to use first, second and third person point of view in order to fully engage with the reader. This adds a little uncertainty. Note the changes in lines 6, 9, 18, 24, 29, Marine Biology. Electrical Engineering. Computer Science. Medical Science. Writing Tutorials. Performing Arts. Visual Arts. Student Life.

Vocational Training. Standardized Tests. Online Learning. Social Sciences. Legal Studies. Political Science. Welcome to Owlcation. Related Articles. By Linda Crampton. By Colin Quartermain. By Howard Allen. By Amara. By ata By Leonard Kelley. By Eric Caunca. By Doug West. By Rupert Taylor. A Reading — Reading of the poem by actor Tom Hiddlestone. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does.

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