Dover Beach

I literally found myself reading this poem by Matthew Arnold more than a several times and each time I read over the poem I did find different meanings. In the first stanza, I feel like he was explaining the mood of the beach.  The very first line of the poem gives me a clue; The sea is calm tonight.  Then he goes into detail how the tide is full and on line 9 he grabs the reader attention; Listen! you hear the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling. He gives us the sound and sense of Dover Beach. Another thing that caught my attention is line 15.  You know how you go to the beach and just reminisce about certain things in your life or how a certain smell reminds you of a specific place in life.  Arnold did a great job in his poetry giving the example of Sophocles.  Sophocles long ago Heard it on he Aegean, and it brough Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow of human misery;  This specific beach brought unclear memories to Sophocles but it wasn't the best.