“诗歌是人生批评”是马修·阿诺德诗学理想的重要体现,也是文艺批评的重要出发点。本文通过对《多佛海滩》的解读,指出该诗在艺术表现、哲理抒情及社会批评等诸多方面成为作者诗学观念的重要代表。本文认为诗歌转达了作者对于当时社会的信仰崩溃和世事剧变的忧思,并进一步表现借助诗歌对民众进行劝谕和训导,并能实现“诗歌是人生批评”的宏大理想。 “Poetry is criticism of life ” is an important manifestation of the ideal of Matthew Arnold ’s poetics, but also an important starting point of literary criticism. Through the interpretation of “Dover Beach”, this paper points out that this poem has become an important representative of the poetic concepts of the author in many aspects such as artistic expression, philosophical lyricism and social criticism. This paper holds that poetry conveys the author’s worries about the collapse of social beliefs and the drastic changes in the world at that time and further expresses his advice and guidance to the public by means of poetry and can realize the grand ideal of “poetry is life criticism.”