In the last three lines of Arnold's "Dover Beach," a simile for the world is:

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The last stanza of Matthew Arnold's poem,
"Dover Beach," is shown below. The meaning of these lines is that the poet, regardless
of what he wants, has come to realize that he and his love must
face the world as one: the world cannot offer anything of any more value than the
exchange of love with another person. The world may seem capable of
providing "joy," "love" and "light," but in truth, the world offers none of these. The
truth is that this life is a place of desolation, unless two people
pledge their love. For life is like battling in the dark, where there is confusion of
sound ("alarms"), there is struggle and fighting an enemy one cannot see in the dark (so
does one confront a friend or an enemy?). Those who attempt to do battle in the dark are
ignorant.

Ah,
love, let us be true
To one another! 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;
And we are here as on a darkling
plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where
ignorant armies clash by
night.

The world is like a
battlefield. Make note of words in the poem which support this
theme: alarms, struggle, fight, armies, clash. eNotes.com's
commentary on the last stanza of the poem confirms that the comparison here is of the
world to a battlefield.

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What the world is really like is a
battlefield at night where soldiers rush about, pursuing and firing at
shadows, unable to tell friend from foe; it is a dark plain 'Where ignorant armies clash
by night.'

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