Dover Beach

To try to understand this poem, I did a little bit of research. Besides looking at poetic anaylsis, I looked at the author and the setting. Arnold was an Englishman who, as evidence in this poem, saw the dwindling amount of religious in his time: "The Sea of Faith/ Was once, too at the full,...lay...furled." I also read that Arnold too had his doubts and anxieties about faith and questioned it. This brings me to the setting and such that is adresses in one of the questions in the book about setting and such. Dover Beach, from what I found, is the shortest way across the English Channel and France is visible from England and vice-versa. So, Arnold is pondering questions of religion as he stares across the English Channel on a moon-lit night. Now, I have my doubts about God like any Christian. But, wouldn't that scene seem a little too perfect and surreal to dispute some sort of supreme being?