In the poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold, how does the image of the light on the French coast in Lines 3-4 take on a more symbolic significance...

On the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone...

Arguably, this light symbolizes hope and connection with the rest of the world. It appears for a moment, inspiring hope, then dissolves in the distance.

"Dover Beach" is a poem that taps into an existential anxiety that will become more pronounced after World War I. Arnold's narrator anticipates the existential crisis of the Modernist age. The third stanza, beginning with "the Sea of Faith" is important as well. Religion, which provided meaning in an otherwise incoherent world, is fading in power and strength, "retreating, to the breath / Of the night-wind."

The coastal setting is significant. In literature, coast lines are the borders between the known world and the Unknown. It is the the line between the firm, stable land on shore vs. the mobile and violent sea.

In the final stanza, in response to this hopelessness and uncertainty, the narrator turns to his/her love. Companionship is one's only solace:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another!

The first line of the stanza begins with a sigh, which can indicate relief, spiritual exhaustion, or both.

For the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain...

"The world," symbolized by the French coast, is not the place of abundance they had imagined. This previous sense of abundance is indicated by the use of the emphatic adverb "so." They are disenchanted by the loss of light on the other coast, causing them now to see the world as a place of absence, loneliness, and uncertainty. The only thing on which they can depend is the presence of each other, "on a darkling plain."

"Darkling" is both literal and metaphorical here. It is night, so the sky is becoming dark. However, the world is also becoming a darker and more frightening place:

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

There is parallelism between darkness and confusion, as well as ignorance. There could very well be an ongoing battle on that other coast.

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

nouns - what do you call the person who passes the trophies to the prize giver/presenter?

The person who gives out the trophies to the winners are called award presenters. So what do u call the person who passes the trophies to the presenter? Thanks!

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.

Notes

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