Comparing Matthew Arnolds Dover Beach and Gerard Manley HopkinsGods

Comparing Matthew Arnolds Dover B distributively and Gerard Manley HopkinsGods richness Matthew Arnolds Dover marge, and Gerard Manley Hopkins Gods Grandeur are similar in that both songs praise the beauty of the subjective 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 sorrow point of view. Hopkins writes in a very compressed, somewhat jerky style, using sentences heavy with alliteration and metaphors. His tone, though affected with sadness and perhaps even anger at man, unlike Arnolds poem, reveals an stay sense of hope. Basically, each poet is presenting a very different view of Faith, and thence of mans ultimate 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 strand of France and the cliffs of England... / Gleaming and vast , out in the tranquil bay. All seems kip downly and quiet. harmonize to Baums reoceanrch on the date and circumstances of the poem, Arnold is probably speaking to his novel bride (86) as he says, Come to the window, sweet is the night-air. But gradually the referee 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 p fall backles 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 span of history-- The turbid ebb and flow / of human misery. In the next stanza beginning with line twenty-one, Arnold gets to the source ... ... in a sky that is brown, not completely black because Gods essence 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 t he darkness. Arnolds love is human love from one various(prenominal) to another 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. Works Cited Baum, Paull F. Ten Studies in the Poetry of Matthew Arnold. Durham Duke UP, 1961. Boyle, Robert S.J. illustration in Hopkins. Chapel Hill U of North Carolina P, 1961. Kirszner, Laurie G. and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature meter reading Reacting Writing. 3rd ed. Fort Worth Harcourt, 1991.