Matthew Arnold’s sublime poem Dover Beach shows his age’s fear at the growing loss of faith, so troubling to many Victorians when long-held certainties about creation were being challenged. Arnold uses the metaphor of “The Sea of Faith”, once a calm, moonlit sea “at the full” but now ebbing inexorably away – his final image is of a “darkling plain” at night. I tried to use his sea imagery to show the literal flooding or drying-up of our waters:
Next: Unchanging truths: growing up“The sea is wild tonight-
The moon is hidden;
Only sharp spears of light
Shoot through the clouds’ dark pall;
Low ominous drumming
Comes on the air unbidden
And leaden raindrops fall
From thunderous height………..Listen! The grating roar
Of retreating seas laid bare
Troubles, as it did before,
But not now as metaphor-
For waters dry and deserts grow
And rivers can no longer flow
And fishes, flailing gasp in vain
On the barren plain…..”