dover beach

lifes flow. This idea is parallel in Dover Beach when the speaker urges his beloved, Ah, love, let us be true/ To one another! In both poems the speaker is interested in the possibility of self-knowledge through moments of happiness and love. There is hope that humans can have knowledge of their true self. The poems Dover Beach and The Buried Life also contrast in ideas. The beginnings of the poems take different approaches. In Dover Beach the speaker is in a natural setting. The moon-blanched land described in the opening lines implies a sense of stability and calmness. However, in The Buried Life the speaker is engaged in simple discourse. The speaker is in a state of sorrow and he converses Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!/ I feel a nameless sadness oer me roll. Another difference between the poems is the style. Dover Beach relies on visual, physical images and doesnt have much feeling. It is not as deep as The Buried Life. With all of the water images, it seems as if Dover Beach is only floating on the surface. The Buried Life is more reflective and inward as a poem. In this poem the speaker focuses on obtaining a higher form of self-awareness which involves sinking into the deep recesses of our breast/ The unregarded river of life. As the poem develops, his mind moves toward the possibility of illuminating insight (Jump 17). Furthermore, in The Buried Life Arnold is concerned with the possibilities of the creative imagination. Water is an intermediary in the sense that it is associated with a humans creative imagination (Roe 28). In Dover Beach this divine intermediary is removed to represent the chaos of human life in an impersonal and col...