Contrasting Worlds in Dover Beach and Quiet WorkTree Works Cited Matthew Arnold's poems always seem to depict two contrasting worlds. In this essay I will examine his poems in more depth and show what these two worlds are, what they express. I will also try to place his work in 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 and ideal world. In most of his poems, the disappointing world is the real world, the real world. In “Quiet Work,” he complains that “a thousand discords resonate,” expressing “the intermittent tumult of man.” It is his commentary on the world around him which, like the negative world of the poem, believes itself to be "too big for haste, too high for rivalry." Such excerpts depict the gross ugliness of humanity. In their 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, etc.1 He did not like these noisy protests. and w...