The Sea
The sea is everywhere in "Dover Beach." It shows up in different places and in different forms, but we feel its power all over the place. Sometimes it's a physical location, something you can actua...
The Tide
The image of the tide shows up repeatedly in this poem. The slow, steady, endless movement of water, in and out, in and out, becomes a symbol of eternity. It also, though, comes to represent change...
The Moon
The moon makes a couple of cameos at the beginning. Even though its role in this poem is pretty brief, we think it's important. The opening parts of "Dover Beach" are so much about the world that w...
Night
The night has a few different roles to play in this poem. In a way, it's kind of a flexible image. At first, it connects with the feelings of comfort and calm that dominate the opening scenes of th...
Naked Shingles
This is such a pure and utterly bleak image that we think it deserves special attention. The speaker of this poem has a bunch of different ways of describing the desolation of the modern world. For...
Darkling Plain
This is the imaginary landscape where the great final simile of the poem comes to its catastrophic end. Just think about how far we've come in such a short poem, how far we are from the pleasure an...