The Unplumbed, Salt, Estranging Sea: The Ocean as Metaphor in Arnold’s “Isolation: To Marguerite” and “To Marguerite—Continued”

The ocean as an image appears in Matthew Arnold’s poetry on a number of occasions. It functions, in many cases, simply as another part of Nature, wild and untamed. I would like to examine the use of the ocean as a metaphor, not only in the use of imagery, but also in Arnold’s choice of meter. Through the combination of metaphor and meter, the ocean becomes a pervading force in Arnold’s “Isolation: To Marguerite” and “To Marguerite—Continued” which emphasizes the transition from Christian community to Agnostic isolation in the mid-Victorian period.

In the first poem of the pair, “Isolation: To Marguerite,” the speaker’s subject is specific and narrow—he is lamenting his former lover who no longer has feelings for him. The speaker makes reference to the ocean in the second stanza when he says, “Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell—“ (Arnold 11), and it is on the words “ebb and swell” that we must focus our attention. The speaker is referring to the swaying of the tide—how the ocean continually crashes upon the shore and then recedes. If we scan the poem, we shall see that the same swaying motion is mimicked in the meter of the poem. It is simple iambic tetrameter, yes; however, coupled with the image of an ebb and swell, the reader has the impression of the ocean.

Of course, there are four lines in the poem that, quite clearly, do not follow this meter. Two are in iambic pentameter catalectic, meaning they are missing one syllable at the end of the line creating a half foot: “To hang over Endymion’s sleep / Upon the pine-grown Latmian sleep” (23-4). The other two are trochaic pentameter catalectic: “Even for a moment didst depart [. . .] Wandering in Heaven, far removed” (15, 27). If we are looking at the meter as representative of the ebb and swell of the tide, then the effect of these jarring lines can be read either as the crashing of waves in opposite directions against each other as the tide comes in and recedes or simply as the tide receding and coming in—iambic meter is the tide coming in; trochaic meter is the tide receding. There are other lines as well that can be read as either iambic or trochaic, especially when they are close to one of the catalectic lines. “Back to thy solitude again!” for instance, can be read as either trochaic or iambic. Normally, the reader tends to put secondary emphasis on a word like “to” rather than “back.” In doing so, the meter becomes trochaic. The word “back” helps to further cement that feeling of swaying back and forth, particularly the feeling of recession in the line, further emphasizing the connection between trochaic meter and the recession of the tide.

Throughout the poem, the speaker describes his heartbreak at realizing that Marguerite no longer loves him. He writes: “What far too soon, alas! I learned— / The heart can bind itself alone, / And faith may oft be unreturned” (8-10). He begins to realize that he was perhaps alone in his feelings for Marguerite all along. In the next stanza, the speaker resigns himself to loneliness, telling Marguerite, “But thou hast long has place to prove / This truth—to prove, and make thine own: / ‘Thou has been, shalt be, art, alone’” (28-30). Here, the speaker asserts that his loneliness is eternal. In the final stanza, the speaker fully accepts his isolation. He writes that happier men than himself:

Have dreamed two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end
Prolonged; nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness. (38-42)

This suggests that the speaker has lost the faith that could release him from isolation. In the next poem, the ocean becomes a metaphor for this isolation.

In “To Marguerite—Continued,” the image of the ocean is much more explicit. Here, the speaker expands on an idea that was only eluded to in the first poem—the isolative power of the ocean. He even begins the poem by using the ocean as a metaphor for isolation: “Yes! in the sea of life enisled” (1). The first word suggests that through his loss of faith in the last stanza of the previous poem, he has discovered a metaphor to describe human interaction in general rather than simply his interaction with Marguerite. The ocean quite obviously functions as a metaphor for what separates human beings from each other. However, it is important to note some new conclusions that the speaker has come to—to see how the speaker’s train of thought has developed. The speaker writes,

For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain—
Oh might our marges meet again! (15-8)

In this stanza, the speaker refers to the past and uses landmass as a metaphor to suggest that all people were once part of a single community. This could be read as a description of the community that people had once thought they were a part of under the Church.

Now because questions have been raised and seeds of doubt planted, this single continent has shifted, forming isolated islands of agnosticism. These poems were written at the same time Mill was supposedly, according to Buckler, writing his Three Essays on Religion (312) where his views on agnosticism are outlined. The final stanza of the poem solidifies the speaker’s agnostic, possibly even nihilistic, feelings:

Who ordered that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea. (19-24)

The speaker clearly asserts an uncaring, uninterested God as the source for the isolating ocean. It was by God’s design that human beings are islands, forever doomed to be isolated by what the speaker calls “the estranging sea” (24). At this point, the speaker is being very direct with the metaphor in contrast with the beginning of “Isolation: To Marguerite,” where the only hint at the ocean as a metaphor was the use of the words “ebb and swell” in conjunction with iambic tetrameter throughout the poem (11). Over the course of the two poems the meaning of the ocean shifts from being the agent by which people are brought in and out of the speaker’s life to the agent by which the speaker is completely isolated from others.

Works Cited

Arnold, Matthew. “Isolation: To Marguerite.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2000. 1354-5.

—. “To Marguerite—Continue.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. Vol. 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2000. 1355-6.

Buckler, William E. “Introduction: Three Essays on Religion.” Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton, 1958. 312.