Interactive Literature Selections Dover Beach

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Dover Beach

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During Reading Strategy
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Vocabulary from the Selection
certitude
strand
tremulous
turbid

Guided Reading Question 1
What does the speaker hear? How does this sound make the speaker feel?
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	The sea is calm tonight.
	The tide is full, the moon lies fair
	Upon the straits—on the French coast the light
	Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
5	Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
	Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
	Only, from the long line of spray
	Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
	Listen! you hear the grating roar
10	Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
	At their return, up the high strand,
	Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
	With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
	The eternal note of sadness in.

15	Sophocles¹ long ago
	Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
	Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
	Of human misery; we
	Find also in the sound a thought,
20	Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

	The Sea of Faith
	Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
	Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled².
	But now I only hear

Guided Reading Question 2
What did Sophocles think of when he heard the sound of the waves on the Aegean Sea centuries before?
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25	Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
	Retreating, to the breath
	Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
	And naked shingles³ of the world.

	Ah, love, let us be true
30	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;
35	And we are here as on a darkling plain
	Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
	Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Guided Reading Question 3
What, according to the speaker, has happened to the “Sea of Faith”?
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