问答题
Analyze the following poem.(15 points) Dover Beach Matthew Arnold 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, 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 roarOf 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.Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea.The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth" s shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo 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.
【正确答案】正确答案：Analyze the following poem.(15 points) In Arnold" s poem, the speaker looks over the shore at Dover and reflects on the scene before him. The first stanza opens with the description of a nightly scene at the seaside. The lyrical self calls his addressee to the window, to share the visual beauty of the scene. Then he calls her attention to the aural experience, which is somehow less beautiful. The lyrical self projects his own feelings of melancholy on to the sound which causes an emotion of " sadness" in him. The second stanza introduces the Greek author Sophocles" idea of " the turbid ebb and flow of human misery. " A contrast is formed to the scenery of the previous stanza. Sophocles apparently heard the similar sound at the "Aegean" sea and thus developed his ideas. Arnold then reconnects this idea to the present. Although there is a distance in time and space, the general feeling prevails. In the third stanza, the sea is turned into the " Sea of Faith," which is a metaphor for a time when religion could still be experienced without the doubt that the Victorian age brought about through Darwinism, the Industrial revolution, Imperialism, a crisis in religion, etc. Arnold illustrates this by using an image of clothes. When religion was still intact, the world was dressed "like the folds of a bright girdle furled. " Now that this faith is gone, the world lies there stripped naked and bleak. The final stanza begins with a dramatic pledge by the lyrical self. He asks his love to be "true" to him. For the beautiful scenery that presents itself to them is really not what it seems to be. On the contrary, as he accentuates with a series of denials, this world does not contain any basic human values. These have disappeared, along with the light and religion and left humanity in darkness. "We" could just refer to the lyrical self and his love, but it could also be interpreted as the lyrical self addressing humanity. The pleasant scenery turns into a " darkling plain," where only hostile, frightening sounds of fighting armies can be heard. Lamenting the transition from an age of certainty into an era of erosion of traditions is the backbone of all four stanzas of the poem, brought together in our imagination by the nostalgic image of the sea. " Misery" , " sadness" and " melancholy" reign most of the poem, yet the author chooses to conclude it with an emotional appeal for honesty as it is the only true certainty left as the world a-round collapses under "struggle" and "fight".