This is Arnold's most popular poem. It contains some of Arnold's deftist felicities: the realization of a tremulo in ll. 10-13, the impressive opening up of the a's and o's to reveal the sound that provokes the thought in ll. 24-25, and the memorable figures of speech in ll. 26-28 and 35-37. But the more remarkable aspect of the poem is its progress, in thirty-seven short lines, from the peace and quiet joy of the opening stanza to the desperate anguish with which the poem ends. Yet, in its dramatic framework (it is a dramatic monologue) the movement, although achieved in so short a space, is wholly credible. The basic contrast is between the appearance of the first stanza and the reality of the last. The sound of the ebb and flow is one stimulus; the memory of the tragic vision of Sophocles is another; the speaker's sudden, analogical perception of the death of the Christian era - a temporary compensation for the tragic awareness of Sophocles - is the third. The speaker is thus thrown back upon his own resources, of which human love is at once the most fragile and intelligible.

Excerpt from The Major Victorian Poets ed. William E. Buckler