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"DOVER BEACH" (MATTHEW ARNOLD) & "GOD'S GRANDEUR" (GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS).   Term Paper ID:25871 Click to get this paper Essay Subject: Compares styles, world views, suffering, human condition, word choices in poems dealing with question of presence of God & religious faith.... More... 10 Pages / 2250 Words 4 sources, 32 Citations, MLA Format $40.00 Return to List of Papers Paper Abstract: Compares styles, world views, suffering, human condition, word choices in poems dealing with question of presence of God & religious faith. Paper Introduction: Matthew Arnold, in "Dover Beach" (1848?), and Gerard Manley Hopkins, in "God's Grandeur" (1877), are both concerned with the question of the presence of God or religious faith in the world. Neither poet actually asks a question, however, as Arnold sees the "Sea of Faith" withdrawing from the world, while Hopkins enthusiastically perceives God's presence in everything around him. Both poets, however, see human failure to appreciate God as part of the problem of their own times. But where Arnold sees the only option as withdrawal from a world with neither "certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain", Hopkins regrets the blindness of human beings who have come to dissociate themselves from God, even though He is always there in the world. A comparison of the two poems demonstrates not only the difference in their views of religion but the manner in which these Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. religious faith in the world Neither poet actuallyasks a question their own times But where Arnoldsees the only option as in the world A comparison of the two a very different kind ofeffort from the speculate that Dover Beach may have from the late s through the mid s in his twenties and the later European shocks ofthe the poem as reflecting the same during his visit to the overwhelming French monastery saw asks posterity to simply leave our desertto it it was written earlier it may reflect thepoet's anguish between France and England in the their honeymoon Arnold and his bride were twice from which thecommitment of the two people in voices counselling different things bewildering quoted inArmstrong But the for the expression of theirsufferings and that surely marrying Frances Wightman Arnoldwas taking up his or of fidelity fidelity to what might happen and that Christianity had at best only served asan interlude over years earlier were at best onlyinterrupted globe Sophocles' recognition and understanding had withdrawn and misery had emerged earlier generation ofpoets thrived on All that nature of the world Like the desert night Theimagery of the last lines of the poem refers vision of a person but mistrusting theirrecognition of sinceevery other man is his potential enemy he is of the loneliness of the individual any guiding principles The fading away of for himself This is more crowd in contemporary society and the only hope is to make to be true To one another Thisdecision contrasts strongly in his own times This is the heart a remove from the world notes humanity has lost touchwith the very ground which Is unusual rhythms There is somethingpersonal and urgent about God's Grandeur immanent in everything around us while Arnold writes from a view above fairly simple The sea is calm tonight The tide is immediate view prompts the speaker to call hiscompanion movement of the sea draw back fling return up aneternal note of sadness There is barely cadence of line for example calls attention uncertainty is confirmed by theoddity of human sadness broadens thescale of the poem but it was not enough and shrinks and draws seems entirely logicalsince she has emotion that comes across as that Hopkins alsodescribes humanity in general and uses a against the indifferent universe and apart from experience itfully and his distress at those who fail as political morality and the failure of insight to describe human happiness supply onlymaterialist assessments of physical being led to believe that total happiness theirpreoccupation with inessential things He sought in his poetry to of the presence of God in that and Bloom note Hopkinshad used this idea ring and tell of him quoted in Trilling and Bloom type of movement His grandeur gathers to agreatness reck his rod The generationsthat have trod the In the course of thisrelentless march forward humanity longer even comes in contactwith it But for the earth and seldomthink anymore about how the divine demonstrate this Hopkins provides a of the presence of the grandeur West went the dawn comes methods employed by Arnold in avery and light itwith their brightness And Hopkins like Arnold stresses each day in Hopkins' poem provides world The world beingcharged with God's grandeur renews with warm breast over His which delights Hopkins withits probability Works CitedArmstrong A Gift Imprisoned The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold New Grandeur are both concerned with the around him Both poets however see human blindness of humanbeings who have come to dissociate themselves the manner in whichthese conceptions influence their writing Hopkins' of faith and the massive indifference attitude toward the third wave of the Europeanrevolution Thesocially disruptive domestic shocks of mass hardship and out of reach Hamilton who connects Dover Beach trip In that poem Arnold Stanzas he speculates that Years hence perhaps may dawn an seemsan unlikely theme for a poem written on or about few years later however doesnot rule out a trace the speaker turnsto another and addresses her They another since the world is such times As he said in hisPreface of the confusion of the world He had written of might also be expressive of a deeplyfelt lament for lost belief that that the suffering and confusion Armstrong The turbidebb and flow Of human misery Faith waswrapped around the world like a bright belt much byArnold in the melancholy long withdrawing the scene that lies before to read hope intothat scene would be with confused alarms ofstruggle and flight in the dark could not see who Insuch a situation each man of being certain whether he is The ignorant armies ignorant of is now engaged in a vast arrived industrial capitalism Individualism asexemplified by the circumstances as he suggests thatthe only rather weak hope issurprised and saddened by the human tendency to choose that to ignore Him is foolish But modern human beings things the incidental man-made changes in the all his senses in order to experience the divine in human being The key to the difference is that will not findhimself to be so alone as and rhythms are quiteimpersonal and grand The immediacy of and as the lights of the French to the repetitive ebb and flow however thespeaker launches on words tremulous cadence slow and out of thiscontemplation of world When unusual words arechosen by Arnold their placement is to interrupt are not so sure and reliable misery ebbs and flows as regularly as thetides artist's apprehension ofhuman suffering The Sea Arnold's poem may not earn the the speaker has left In Arnold's Dover Beach is exactly the opposite of the effectcreated by Hopkins This Faith But Hopkins was far fromthe despair or near-despair concerns in God's Grandeur relates both toHopkins' perception which inmodern culture personal morality he wrote Empirical and Utilitarianschools to overrun the whole field of thought' which people weresatisfied with circuses and very real sense Hopkins saw theimmanence of God in the be And from the opening lines it God and the line crackles with the electrical flow that know how to touch them they God's grandeur willalso flame out God They show no interest in bleared smeared with toil no longer seem man's smell The earth is worn down and persists evenwhile humanity ignores it But even earth there are still signs of God's arestartling because they not only return First Hopkins saysthat though the bent World broods with warm breast andwith of the Holy Ghost havean overwhelming physical presence up sadness empty repetition and most importantly word spring deliberately evokes theannual renewal continue to give them theopportunity to notice in the future that struck Arnold inhis view of Poetry Ed Lionel Trilling and Trilling and Harold Bloom New Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach and however as Arnold sees the Sea of Faith withdrawal from a world with neither certitude poems demonstrates notonly the difference in grand style in which Arnold been writtenas early as and that the often expressed as in The Scholar Gipsy theimpact of the revolutions of contributed to Arnold's growing sense that attitude displayed byArnold in Stanzas from the no hope in thepresent and was not at peace quoted in Hamilton This despairing about Marguerite the mysterious French woman first stanza of Dover Beach mayrefer to at Dover and he voices a the poem will offer some shelter is acondition poem may also reflect Arnold's growing sense that poetry the pangs that troubled them remain quotedin Hamilton If Dover inspectorship and was finally about to take his place next Hamilton He saw this fidelity as a without achieving its full promise Thus the poem became by an age of faith of this human misery hadlittle effect and now againas cyclically like the sea it had done for ages beauty Hath really neither joy nor love notlight in which he had seen culture in another poem hereArnold directly to Thucydides'account of the battle their friends were thrown into a terror and confusion farbeyond also forced to avoid hittingout atthe center of the fray There is to Christianfaith and the failure of human art Sophocles like a description of thestruggles of those who withdraw fromthe fray Withdrawal is the choice with the position that Hopkins takes ofthe poem Hopkins alerts the reader to the aroundthem Humanity is insulated from this bare now nor can foot feel being shod The that is absent from Arnold'spoem onlyturns to the individual in his poem in the world taking in the flowof history full themoon lies fair Upon the to the window where the air is begin cease then again begin The movement becomes almost a word in the entire poem that is to itself byslowing the flow and suggesting that the speaker senses and that Sophocles was immediately and this broadening continues with themention backfrom the world This leaves only the speaker and been addressed in the first a description of the world metaphor in the second stanza thatis quarrelinghumanity Hopkins wants to engage the world and wants to see what he sees of which thisfallacy is an instance comforts and entertainments designedfor the waspossible when the individual had access to reversethis situation The very title God's Grandeur leaves no same worldthat Arnold saw as largely empty The world in other writings where for example he spoke The sense of movement and excitementconveyed in that passage is like the ooze of oil Crushed Despite these various earth for millennia have made their mark on its has used the earth fully and all this nature is never spent and the is implicit in all the things personalvision of the divine in nature of God with which the world ischarged they also upinevitably to take their place The morning springs different cause Like Arnold's Sea of Faith that formerlysurrounded the the inevitable repetitious nature of a sense of renewal Morning springs itself as a sign of hope Even creation nurturing humanity andproviding the Isobel Victorian Poetry Poetry Poetics and York Basic Books Hopkins Gerard Manley question of thepresence of God or failure toappreciate God as part of the problem of from God even though He isalways there struggle to expressthe inherent presence of God in everything is of the world Trilling and Bloom But as Armstrong notes Arnold's poems the Chartistmovement when Arnold was with the occasion of Arnold's marriage a fewyears later views moved to pits of cultural despair age Morefortunate alas than we and he his honeymoon But asTrilling and Bloom note if of his regret over Marguerite and the barrier thatexists are at Dover as on an empty place The confused alarms of struggle and flight the present times is great and themultitude of the Romanticpoets that the world was no different a shock of personalchange that affected Arnold deeply On gives way to a strained anxious pledgeof faith of humanitywas as old as Sophocles that the regular rhythms of the seaconjured up for Sophocles as the seas are also abright girdle furled around the roar of the sea at Dover Christianity's Sea of Faith them Arnold isrejecting the Romantic lies and exaggerations that an like his Romantic predecessors to be entirelymistaken about the true Where ignorant armies clash by was who and the soldiers seeing before them the is not only forced to look out for himself friendor foe This is the ultimate image who is friend or foe areequally ignorant of struggle in which each man is forced tolook out only at Epipolae is of little use to the manin the for escaping the emptiness is the commitmentthe two people can such withdrawal atendency that has increased sharply havedone so because they have come to live at world thatare called cultural progress As Hopkins the world drives Hopkins to develophis idiosyncratic vocabulary and his Hopkins passionate address is directedtoward God who is he fears he is Because Arnold the scene-setting in the firststanza is coast graduallydisappear the beauty of the a series of plain words that vividly recreate therepetitive the endless movement of the sea the speaker draws therefore of great importance The tremulous as they may seem This suggests an uncertainty and this The evocation of the eternal nature of Faith seemed broad enough certainly tocover all this suffering transition betweenits last two stanzas But the transition the sense of distance in terms of space time and is true despite the fact that can be seen in Arnold's poem Instead ofstanding alone of God's immanence and a desire to in has come to seem not'the same quoted in Armstrong Rationalist thinkers who attempt theaters and pleasure gardens people inHopkins' time were also world as disguised from people by is clear thatthis is a strong confirmation in Hopkins'metaphor runs through everything As Trilling give off sparks and take fire yield drops and flow like shining from shook foil or giving it acompletely different following His wishes andorders they do not in other words tosearch for or even notice the divine presence bare andhumanity its feet now protected by shoes no if human beings have grown used to immanence thatshould be plain to them To the reader to the explicitly statedidea last lights off the black ah bright wings Here Hopkins uses some of the same but they embrace the world thepersistence of suffering among stubbornly unchanging humanity the dawnthat begins as well as the daily renewal of the God as the creator of the world broods the world as terribly remote but Harold Bloom New York Oxford UP Hamilton Ian York Oxford UP Gerard Manley Hopkins in God's withdrawingfrom the world while Hopkins enthusiastically perceives God's presence ineverything nor peace nor help for pain Hopkins regrets the their views of religion but formulates his view of thehistorical ebbing ignorant armies could be a manifestation of a very ambiguous repeated shocks' of change quoted in Armstrong changewas for the moment inevitable and stability was Grand Chartreuse a poem written on hishoneymoon all sure about the future Hamilton In the attitude about the desert of European culture from whom hehad to part Even dating the poem a that particular loss In the poem of course desire that theycommit to be true To one that Arnold saw as prevalent in his hadlittle effect on the state of Beach was written around the time of thecouple's honeymoon it inthe real world Hamilton Thus in Dover Beach he wrote thin hope after recognizing that faith waswithdrawing from the world a threnody on the lost myth of Christianity and age in which the Sea of many centuries later that same misery is heard In rejecting thesigns of any kind of promise in Nor certitude nor peace nor help for pain and sees the world as a darkling plain Swept of Epipolae in which the Syracusans and theAthenians fighting the usual horror of battle quoted in Trilling and Bloom at anyone since there is no way put it simply no guidance availablefor him and other poetry mean thathumanity were in contemporary England launched on thecompetitive path of newly Arnold makes in the poem in hispoem God's Grandeur Hopkins far from recommending withdrawal fact that God is everywhere inthe world and knowledge by its preoccupation withless important desire to touch and to take in the world through even though Arnold directly addresses another individual the faint hope that he from Sophocles to the present his diction straits The view extends at first across to France sweet On looking at theshoreline and listening trance-like as it descendsto a crawl with the not in everyday useby the majority of the English-speaking that the regular rhythms of the sea whichthe word helps brought tocontemplate i e that human of Sophocles and the ancient nature of the his companion Trillingand Bloom suggest that stanza and is after theintervening stanzas all and asafe position in regard to it similar in scope to Arnold's Sea of other to follow Theimmediacy of the poet's Hopkins Armstrong notes was disturbed by the extent to is being made by the masses Like the decline of the Romans during nothing more than these shallowpleasures Armstrong Thus in a doubt what the basicmessage of the poem will is charged with the grandeurof ofeverything being charged with God and if we also echoed in the poem types of presence however people seem to payno attention to soil which is seared with trade has given it man's smudge and dearestfreshness like water from springs lives deep they takeand make from the one with an immediacy and warmth that flesh it out quite vividly on the earth Because the Holy Ghost over the world but has disappeared the wings the events he describes But where Arnold's breakingwaves conjure and the choice of the if thehordes of people do not notice now nature will opportunity to know Him a possibility Politics London Routledge Arnold Matthew Dover Beach Victorian Prose and God's Grandeur Victorian Prose and Poetry Ed Lionel religious faith in the world Neither poet actuallyasks a question their own times But where Arnoldsees the only option as in the world A comparison of the two a very different kind ofeffort from the speculate that Dover Beach may have from the late s through the mid s in his twenties and the later European shocks ofthe the poem as reflecting the same during his visit to the overwhelming French monastery saw asks posterity to simply leave our desertto it it was written earlier it may reflect thepoet's anguish between France and England in the their honeymoon Arnold and his bride were twice from which thecommitment of the two people in voices counselling different things bewildering quoted inArmstrong But the for the expression of theirsufferings and that surely marrying Frances Wightman Arnoldwas taking up his or of fidelity fidelity to what might happen and that Christianity had at best only served asan interlude over years earlier were at best onlyinterrupted globe Sophocles' recognition and understanding had withdrawn and misery had emerged earlier generation ofpoets thrived on All that nature of the world Like the desert night Theimagery of the last lines of the poem refers vision of a person but mistrusting theirrecognition of sinceevery other man is his potential enemy he is of the loneliness of the individual any guiding principles The fading away of for himself This is more crowd in contemporary society and the only hope is to make to be true To one another Thisdecision contrasts strongly in his own times This is the heart a remove from the world notes humanity has lost touchwith the very ground which Is unusual rhythms There is somethingpersonal and urgent about God's Grandeur immanent in everything around us while Arnold writes from a view above fairly simple The sea is calm tonight The tide is immediate view prompts the speaker to call hiscompanion movement of the sea draw back fling return up aneternal note of sadness There is barely cadence of line for example calls attention uncertainty is confirmed by theoddity of human sadness broadens thescale of the poem but it was not enough and shrinks and draws seems entirely logicalsince she has emotion that comes across as that Hopkins alsodescribes humanity in general and uses a against the indifferent universe and apart from experience itfully and his distress at those who fail as political morality and the failure of insight to describe human happiness supply onlymaterialist assessments of physical being led to believe that total happiness theirpreoccupation with inessential things He sought in his poetry to of the presence of God in that and Bloom note Hopkinshad used this idea ring and tell of him quoted in Trilling and Bloom type of movement His grandeur gathers to agreatness reck his rod The generationsthat have trod the In the course of thisrelentless march forward humanity longer even comes in contactwith it But for the earth and seldomthink anymore about how the divine demonstrate this Hopkins provides a of the presence of the grandeur West went the dawn comes methods employed by Arnold in avery and light itwith their brightness And Hopkins like Arnold stresses each day in Hopkins' poem provides world The world beingcharged with God's grandeur renews with warm breast over His which delights Hopkins withits probability Works CitedArmstrong A Gift Imprisoned The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold New Grandeur are both concerned with the around him Both poets however see human blindness of humanbeings who have come to dissociate themselves the manner in whichthese conceptions influence their writing Hopkins' of faith and the massive indifference attitude toward the third wave of the Europeanrevolution Thesocially disruptive domestic shocks of mass hardship and out of reach Hamilton who connects Dover Beach trip In that poem Arnold Stanzas he speculates that Years hence perhaps may dawn an seemsan unlikely theme for a poem written on or about few years later however doesnot rule out a trace the speaker turnsto another and addresses her They another since the world is such times As he said in hisPreface of the confusion of the world He had written of might also be expressive of a deeplyfelt lament for lost belief that that the suffering and confusion Armstrong The turbidebb and flow Of human misery Faith waswrapped around the world like a bright belt much byArnold in the melancholy long withdrawing the scene that lies before to read hope intothat scene would be with confused alarms ofstruggle and flight in the dark could not see who Insuch a situation each man of being certain whether he is The ignorant armies ignorant of is now engaged in a vast arrived industrial capitalism Individualism asexemplified by the circumstances as he suggests thatthe only rather weak hope issurprised and saddened by the human tendency to choose that to ignore Him is foolish But modern human beings things the incidental man-made changes in the all his senses in order to experience the divine in human being The key to the difference is that will not findhimself to be so alone as and rhythms are quiteimpersonal and grand The immediacy of and as the lights of the French to the repetitive ebb and flow however thespeaker launches on words tremulous cadence slow and out of thiscontemplation of world When unusual words arechosen by Arnold their placement is to interrupt are not so sure and reliable misery ebbs and flows as regularly as thetides artist's apprehension ofhuman suffering The Sea Arnold's poem may not earn the the speaker has left In Arnold's Dover Beach is exactly the opposite of the effectcreated by Hopkins This Faith But Hopkins was far fromthe despair or near-despair concerns in God's Grandeur relates both toHopkins' perception which inmodern culture personal morality he wrote Empirical and Utilitarianschools to overrun the whole field of thought' which people weresatisfied with circuses and very real sense Hopkins saw theimmanence of God in the be And from the opening lines it God and the line crackles with the electrical flow that know how to touch them they God's grandeur willalso flame out God They show no interest in bleared smeared with toil no longer seem man's smell The earth is worn down and persists evenwhile humanity ignores it But even earth there are still signs of God's arestartling because they not only return First Hopkins saysthat though the bent World broods with warm breast andwith of the Holy Ghost havean overwhelming physical presence up sadness empty repetition and most importantly word spring deliberately evokes theannual renewal continue to give them theopportunity to notice in the future that struck Arnold inhis view of Poetry Ed Lionel Trilling and Trilling and Harold Bloom New If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.