The poem, “Dover Beach,” consists of five rimed stanzas. The stanzas are uneven; the rime scheme is complicated and would require a new essay to discuss its implications.
First Stanza: “The sea is calm tonight”
The speaker stands at a window looking out at the sea. He seems to address a beloved, whom as entreats to “Come to the window, sweet is the night air!” Such an invitation might be a romantic gesture to share the lovely scene: “The sea is calm tonight / The tide is full, the moon lies fair.” But that is not the case, as the reader discovers later in the poem.
Second Stanza: “Only, from the long line of spray”
In the second stanza, the speaker dramatizes the crashing waves upon the beach: “Listen! you hear the grating roar / Of pebbles which the waves draw back.” He notes how one can hear the roar “begin, and cease, and again begin.” As they repeat this sound, they “bring / The eternal note of sadness in.”
Instead of enjoying the lovely, calm scene, this speaker’s mind turns to universal sadness. The crashing waves beginning and ceasing remind him primarily of negativity.
Third Stanza: “Sophocles long ago”
The speaker then supports his mournful view by alluding to Sophocles’ hearing the “ebb and flow” long ago “on the Aegean.” He then turns the allusion, saying, “we / Find also in the sound a thought, / Hearing it by this distant northern sea.” Similar to Sophocles’ remarking about the ups and downs of “human misery,” this speaker, however, has an additional thought, which he will elucidate in the fourth stanza.
Fourth Stanza: “The Sea of Faith”
The speaker breaks forth his lament: it used to be that humanity was engulfed in faith, which “Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.” Notice that the speaker does not identify faith as a protector, nor does he mention the Deity. He merely mentions “faith” and metaphorically compares it to the sea “at the full, and round earth's shore.”
However, now things have changed, and he hears only “Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” As it roars, however, it is “Retreating, to the breath / Of the night wind.” Faith is then likened to a sea that has only the negative aspect of the roar as it is retreating. He further negates the act by stating that faith’s retreat runs “down the vast edges drear / And naked shingles of the world.”
Fifth Stanza: “Ah, love, let us be true”
The speaker then seems to offer the only remedy for this loss of faith, that is, if the loss, indeed, requires a remedy. He seems to address the beloved, whom he invited to join him at the window when he says, “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” The world which sometimes seems “so
beautiful, so new” in reality “Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.”
However, if he is suggesting a vow of truth between himself and his beloved, he should have said, “let us be true / To each other!” To “one another” indicates more than two people are involved. If the speaker is limiting being true only to himself and a beloved, he is seeking isolation from the world and just how would that improve anything?
On the other hand, if the speaker is really imploring all humanity to take this vow of truth, his musings have a far greater universal appeal. The beginning invitation then would indicate that he is asking all humanity to notice the negatives and the positives of human activity, and then take truth to “one another” to be a restorative virtue.
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