Comparing Matthew Arnolds Dover Beach and Gerard Manley HopkinsGods

Comparing Matthew Arnolds Dover Beach and Gerard Manley HopkinsGods Grandeur Matthew Arnolds Dover Beach, and Gerard Manley Hopkins Gods Grandeur are similar in that both poems congratulations the beauty of the natural world and deplore mans role in that world. The style and tone of each poem is quite different, however. Arnold writes in an easy, flowing style and as the poem develops, reveals a deeply melancholy point of view. Hopkins writes in a very compressed, somewhat jerky style, using sentences heavy with alliteration and metaphors. His tone, though touched(p) with sadness and perhaps even anger at man, unlike Arnolds poem, reveals an abiding sense of hope. Basically, each poet is presenting a very different view of Faith, and consequently of mans crowning(prenominal) condition. Matthew Arnold begins his poem by describing a calm, beautiful scene. Dover Beach is lying fair in the moonlight. It is high tide and he sees the coast of France and the cliffs of England... / Gl eaming and vast, proscribed in the tranquil bay. All seems lovely and quiet. According to Baums research on the date and circumstances of the poem, Arnold is probably speaking to his new bride (86) as he says, go far to the window, sweet is the night-air. But gradually the reader senses a shifting of mood and tone. Now he describes the line of spray... / Where the sea meets the land as moon-blanched. And the tide, tossing pebbles as it comes, is a grating roar with a tremulous cadence slow that brings / The eternal note of sadness in. This melancholy mood grows deeper as he thinks of mans long embroil of history-- The turbid ebb and flow / of human misery. In the next stanza beginning with line twenty-one, Arnold gets to the reason ... ... in a sky that is brown, not completely minatory because Gods Spirit is hovering in love over the dark world still, like a mother dove brooding over her nest. Obviously, both poets recognize the darkness in the world and both see love as a light in the darkness. Arnolds love is human love from one individual to some other and even that seems uncertain. The redeeming love Hopkins speaks of is Gods love for man and His creation. That love is unchanging and indestructible--an abiding hope in the darkness. What a difference faith can make. kit and caboodle Cited Baum, Paull F. Ten Studies in the Poetry of Matthew Arnold. Durham Duke UP, 1961. Boyle, Robert S.J. Metaphor in Hopkins. Chapel Hill U of North Carolina P, 1961. Kirszner, Laurie G. and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature Reading Reacting Writing. 3rd ed. Fort deserving Harcourt, 1991.