The industrialization and its consequential desensitizing of the personal power of creativity are seen

throughout much of Victorian poetry. The Enlightenment that had culminated in two major
revolutions upon two continents influenced this Victorian age by placing everything under the
microscope of unbridled scientific inquiry and intellectual scrutiny that birthed a withering
skepticism that began to strip the human heart bare. Tennyson, in The Lady Of Shalott and Arnold in
both Marguerite piecesand even in Dover Beach, painted pictures of lonely human figures looking
for meaning in life. Poignant portrayals of the deep longing within the human heart to be known and
appreciated are seen in all of his works.
Arnolds most famous poem, Dover Beach (1851) conveys a universal sorrow of his time. Arnold
like Wordsworth is hearing still the sad music of humanity. This poem is a characterization of the
entire Victorian age or even the modern world in general. It deals with the recurrent theme of the loss
of faith and religious values in a world, where materialism has become deeply rooted. It is a
memorable expression of Arnolds melancholy view of life. Profoundly melancholy in tone, the poem
shows the loss of religious faith caused by the unprecedented growth of commerce and science in the
nineteenth century, as J. D. Jump remarks:
Dover Beach is a short poem, but it embraces a great range and death of significance. As
elsewhere, Arnold discloses his melancholy preoccupation with the thought of the
inevitable decline of religious faith, and expresses the belief that in a successful love-
relationship he may realize to which the world is hostile.
With the loss of religious faith, the world has slipped into the grip of doubt, dispute, distractions and
fear with the result that the world is no better than a barren shingled beach. J.C. Grierson has pointed
out: Arnold saw himself as one who stood alone on a naked beach from which the tide of faith
has ebbed.
It expresses Arnolds feelings of sadness, loneliness, religious loss and spiritual isolation. The roar
of the sea-waves at beach is symbolic for the poet of the crumbling faith of human beings, particularly
of the Victorian age. The true voice of the sensitive Victorian intellectual broods over the inevitable
loss of faith and the meaning of life here. The eternal note of sadness brought to the mind of the poet
the violent ebb and flow of miseries of mankind.
To Marguerite- Continued (1849), is a love-lyric in the Swizerland group with an expression of
Arnolds inherent pessimism and sense of loneliness. It introduces the failure of communication in the
possibility of true love. Man is a duality, with an outward behaviour frivolous and futile, hiding a
genuine self or true value. There is not only the division of the individual, but each man is isolated
from his fellow individuals. This is not only because each mortal is by nature an island but through
deliberate concealment of the self from others for fear of inviting indifference or contempt. Living in a
populous world man is utterly lonely and companionless. As a matter of fact, We mortal millions live
alone, illustrates the discovery of universal spiritual loneliness that is apparently what Arnold felt to
be at the heart of Marguerite experience. His own sense of isolation is an exact manifestation of a
general truth of human nature- of how all men are enisled in the sea of life, as E.D.H. Johnson points
out:
In the lyric entitled To Margurite-continued the poets estrangement from his mistress
undergoes a further expansion to include the concept that in the modern world there no
longer exists any channel for communication between one individual and another on the
deeper sensibilities. The impossibility of true love is thus emblematic of general
breakdown in human intercourse. Every man has, in truth, become an island.
Arnold strongly emphasized on this loneliness of human beings. It contains a general statement
about the condition of human existence. William A. Madden points out: Lover and beloved
participate in a universal alienation. Arnold makes clear in one of the finest of the Switzerland
poems. Universal human predicament is reflected in the following lines:
Yes! In the sea of life enisled, / With echoing straits between us thrown,/ Dotting the
shoreless watery wild,/ We mortal millions live alone.
Arnold himself realized the pathetic loneliness of the individual, the sad luck of human affection in
life, that unplumbed salt, estranging sea, which divides man from man. Ostensibly the two lovers are
seen as islands long to be reunited. Michael Thorpe points out:
 To Marguerite-continued might well be read as an elegy upon the universal frustration
of losing contact between man and man , under the conditions of separation that life
imposes: isolation, not sharing a mutually sustaining fellowship is the common lot.
Universal frustration of human life is revealed in the following lines:
Who ordered, that their longings fire/ Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?/ Who ordered
vain their deep desire? / A God, a God their severance ruled! / And bade betwixt their shores to
be / The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.
Mans life is a tale of both happiness and misery but to Arnold is is a tale misery which sometimes
deepens and sometimes lessens as man struggles on. Religious faith is gradually disappearing like the
receding waves of the sea. With the loss of faith in the world Arnold felt that there was nothing to
console life. Life appeared to be a dream-land of beauty and outward manifestation of charm but in
fact had nothing to endear life-neither joy, nor light, nor peace, nor relief. To Arnold, the world was a
vale of tears, a place to endure and to suffer. It was a world full of darkness for as world without faith
was a world without light. Human beings were like soldiers fighting on the naked shingles of the
darkling strand Arnold felt himself isolated from the intellectual and moral standards of those around
him. A. D. Culler points out:
We are here as a darkling plain may be taken as the central statement which Arnold
makes about the human condition a statement that no Romantic poet ever made and
that no Victorian poet before hardy made with such uncompromising severity.