Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold’s, “Dover Beach” is a thought provoking piece. It took me reading through it several times to understand the different depths of its meaning. Throughout the poem, there is a lot of irony, and many appeals to the auditory and visual senses. The tone in this poem is sad and somewhat dismal, but the speaker is communicating to us the importance of keeping faith and hope in spite of that, and the importance being honest, true, and faithful to one another. The irony in this poem is the main plot of the poem. The speaker has taken a woman to a beautiful beach in France (Dover Beach). There, they look over the cliffs at the beautiful ocean, the moon is full and bright, and the night-air is calm and peaceful.