Focus on images: Reread “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (eText p. 423) and answer question 1 at the end of the poem: Discuss what you consider to be this poem’s central point. How do the speaker’s descriptions of the ocean work toward making that point?

Writing Assignment
Length: about 400-500 words
Format: essay
Respond to either A or B:

A. Focus on images: Reread “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (eText p. 423) and answer question 1 at the end of the poem: Discuss what you consider to be this poem’s central point. How do the speaker’s descriptions of the ocean work toward making that point?

Or:

B. Focus on figures of speech: Reread “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns (eText p. 389) and “The Mexican Cabdriver’s Poem for His Wife, Who Has Left Him” by Martín Espada (eText p. 441). How does each poet use figurative language (as well as imagery) to help the reader understand how the speaker feels about his “luve” in Burns’s poem, and how the cabdriver feels about his wife in Espada’s?

FORMAT:

· Set up your paper in MLA style: typed, double-spaced, with one-and-a quarter-inch margins, 12-point font.

· For MLA style: See the Purdue Owl and/or speak to a librarian.

NOTE:

· Poem titles are in “quotation marks” : “We Real Cool”

· Authors are referred to by LAST NAME (it’s “Brooks suggests…”, not “Gwendolyn suggests”)

· Include the line number when quoting a word or line of poetry. For example:

Hazel calls the frog “ya little green pervert” (20).

EVALUATION:

Your paper will be evaluated on your ability to express your ideas about the poem in a clear, organized essay; your statements are supported by a careful reading of the poem; you note and discuss specific and important features in the poem; your essay is proofed and free from grammatical errors; you have followed the directions of the assignment.

**THIS IS NOT A RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT.**

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NOTE: Plagiarized work receives zero points and NO REWRITES. See the syllabus for more information and plagiarism and late papers.

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
Dover Beach 1867
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 roar

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.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery1; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

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 furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles2 of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

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;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

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