Contrasting Worlds in Dover Beach and Quiet Work Three Works Cited Matthew Arnold's poems always seem to portray two contrasting worlds. In this essay I will examine his poems more deeply and show what these two worlds are, what they express. I will also try to see his work in relation to its social and historical context. One of the two worlds found in Arnold's poems is a disappointing or pessimistic world, while the other is a heavenly, ideal world. In most of his poems the disappointing world is the real world, the real world. In “Quiet Work” he laments that “a thousand discordances resound,” expressing “the intermittent tumult of man.” This is his commentary on the world around him which, like the negative world of poetry, is deemed "too big for haste, too high for rivalry". Such excerpts describe the rude ugliness of humanity. In its historical context, this can be seen as a commentary on the political events of the time: the February Revolution in France, the Chartist movement in England and so on.1 He did not like these noisy protests ew...