e falsehood of Arnold’s beautiful yet unrealistic poem. “Dover Beach” ends with Arnold explaining to his girl that the only sure thing in this world is their relationship:Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. (Arnold 648)Arnold’s belief in the relationship of himself and this girl while stating that it is more stable than anything else in the world allows Hecht an easy avenue for criticism of Arnold’s belief. Consequently, Hecht’s poem begins with lines that convey the harsh reality that nothing in the world will last and especially not the love between two people (Brown 121): So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girlWith the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,And he said to her, “Try to be true to me,And I’ll do the same to you, for things are badAll over, etc., etc.” (Hecht, “The Dover Bitch” 1632) In the same manner that Hecht employs wit and parody, he also employs irony and “narratives of atrocity” (Hecht, Vol. 19 209). Four poems “Birdwatchers of America,” “More Light! More Light!,” “The Vow,” and “Christmas is Coming” are the finest examples of this type of Hechtian poetry. “Birdwatchers of America” utilizes irony to create twists in the poem in its use of a dove as the bird that pecks out the eyes of a dead man (Hecht, “Birdwatchers of America” 1072). This use of the dove, typically a bird that represents peace, displays the role irony plays in Hecht’s works: It’s all very well to dream of a dove that saves, Picasso’s or the Pope...
