Dover Beach

"And here we are on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
"Dover Beach"
Matthew Arnold


This poem is an apostrophe that directly addresses "The Sea of Faith." For this poem, I am going to answer some of the questions in the book. Question number 4 talks about how the speaker is lamenting the decline of faith in his time. It asks, "Is he himself a believer?"
The speaker is most likely a believer of faith because he says, "I only hear the [Sea of Faith's] melancholy, long withdrawing roar." He is sad that people's faith these days has declined to the point that it's evident everywhere ("naked shingles of the world"); it was, "once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore," but now it has lessened and people are becoming more materialistic rather than spiritual. He also shows that he is faithful through his pleading to the sea/faith that they will become closer--"let us be true To one another!" He wants to grow in faith so that he may help those around him in a world where everyone struggles and no one seems to be able to make compromises over issues.

The overall tone of this poem (question 6) is a reflective one. The speaker is listening to the sea, remembering the history of "human misery" that has caused a decline in faith, and he is reflecting on how he wishes he could fix the reality of people's "confused alarms of struggle and flight."