Dover Beach

 The tone of the poem, Dover Beach, is complex because it alternates between despondence to the possibility of change by drawing parallels with the description of the sea itself.
    Certain choice phrases throughout the poem provide an overall pessimistic tone. The lines, "The eternal note of sadness" and " flow of human misery" are distinctly referring to a state of anguish that arrives with the tide (14,18). The stanza that introduces "the Sea of Faith", does so in the past tense, suggesting that hope is no longer present, hence the speaker is reminded of his pessimism.
    The gloomier tone is contrasted between the poem's alternating lighthearted beginning and end. The speaker first describes the sea as a thing of beauty calling it, "Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay" (5). This form of description reappears again in the last stanza as the speaker addresses his/her 'love' about, "a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new." This line introduces the possibility of a better situation than the one they are in currently.  The optimism is short lived because the poems last line return to their present situation of "confused alarms of struggle and flight".  Because of the speaker's constantly changing outlook, the reader is led to believe that the speaker is in a difficult situation, trying to stay optimistic for the sake of his love, but ultimately failing.