Not Requiem for a Dream

So the poem is "Dover Beach," by Matthew Arnold. It is, however, a beautiful requiem for what Arnold regarded as a dream: faith, once so strong in Europe, has been abandoned. Nor can reason help: "Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain."

Arnold is therefore, of the moderns, the first to be postmodern--the first to see that reason could not fulfill the role of faith, and that, because he thought faith could not be regained, the world was sunk in darkness.

He is correct, of course, inasmuch as men cannot regain faith. But that is why faith is a supernatural gift, not a natural attainment.

Poem beneath the fold.