The third stanza of “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold is essentially a single extended metaphor that compares faith to a sea surrounding the world.

How to Critique Poetry

1. Start every critique with what you like about the poem or writing and end with reiterating the same points.
2. Balance your critiques and suggestions with positive observations.
3. Be sensitive to the writer.
4. Include a disclaimer that says you recognize the poet has the right to throw your critique into the nearest dumpster.

He says that the sun is bright for them who can see with their eyes. But for him, the sun’s warmth is all he has got to know that it is day or night. He cannot know how the sun makes a day or a night because because he does not have a sight.

Definition of Metaphysical Poetry The poems classified in this group do share common characteristics: they are all highly intellectualized, use rather strange imagery, use frequent paradox and contain extremely complicated thought.

Metaphysical Conceit = is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. It usually sets up an analogy between one entity’s spiritual qualities and an object in the physical world and sometimes controls the whole structure of the poem. “

noun. an excessively favorable opinion of one’s own ability, importance, wit, etc. something that is conceived in the mind; a thought; idea: He jotted down the conceits of his idle hours. imagination; fancy. a fancy; whim; fanciful notion.

poet Samuel Johnson

: highly intellectualized poetry marked by bold and ingenious conceits, incongruous imagery, complexity and subtlety of thought, frequent use of paradox, and often by deliberate harshness or rigidity of expression.

1. John Donne, ‘The Flea’. Like many of the best metaphysical poems, ‘The Flea’ uses an interesting and unusual conceit to make an argument – in this case, about the nature of physical love. Like Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (see below), ‘The Flea’ is essentially a seduction lyric.

Metaphysical poets also wrote in figurative, lofty language, while the Cavaliers were simple, being more apt to say what they meant in clear terms. The Cavalier poet wrote short, refined verses, and the tone of Cavalier poetry was generally easy-going.

AS A METAPHYSICAL POET: When Dryden, Johnson and Dowden called Donne a metaphysical poet, they referred to the style of Donne. His poetry is metaphysical because of his individualism and his quest for learning. His poetry is full of wit. It is obscure and it indulges in far fetched conceits.

The speaker embellishes the extended metaphor about the Sea of Faith by adding that in the past, “round earth’s shore [it] / Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.” This gives the impression that world was once wrapped up in and enclosed by the bright strength of Christianity when that faith was still powerful …

The Sea of Faith movement is so called as the name is taken from this poem, as the poet expresses regret that belief in a supernatural world is slowly slipping away; the “sea of faith” is withdrawing like the ebbing tide.

The poem is about how there is a conflict between religion and science and how the world is losing faith in God and how the only things that can fill the void that faith once filled is loyalty, comfort, and love.

What is the speaker’s view of his world as it is presented in the last stanza? The speaker views the world as lacking feeling. he feels that it is a place of confusion because faith has been pulled away. He believes everyone is ignorant because of the lack of faith and feelings.

Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is an expression of a particular kind of unease and religious uncertainty that arose during the mid-Victorian period, a reaction to the loss of faith that was happening in line with the rise of science.

Matthew Arnold achieves a lonely tone in the poem “Dover Beach, ” through the use of imagery, simile, and personification. The poem begins with a simple statement: “the sea is calm tonight”. At this early moment this is as yet nothing but a statement, waiting for the rest of the work to give it meaning.

Sophocles was a Greek tragic dramatist. His popular tragedies are Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Ajax etc. Sophocles, in his famous tragedy, “Antigone” refers that he heard the “turbid ebb and flow/ of human misery” in Aegean sea, a part of Mediterranean sea.

In “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold (1998, p. 723) introduces the dominant image in the first line of the poem: “the sea is calm tonight.” The sea is both a symbol and a metaphor, referencing the “eternal note of sadness” as well as the “Sea of Faith (Arnold, 1998, p.

Hover for more information. In the third stanza of this poem, Arnold creates a metaphor through the phrase “the Sea of Faith.” Here, Arnold is comparing the sea to the strong religious feelings which the people of England once held.