"Porphyria’s Lover" concerns itself with psychological issues. Indicate these problems. How does the poem deal with them? "Dover Beach"...

To say that the narrator of Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" has "psychological issues" is an understatement. He is a madman who imagines that Porphyria, his caretaker, is in love with him. Because he is mad, he does not understand that she is there simply to look after him. Thus, he misinterprets all of her actions and motivations. Ultimately, he kills her by strangling her with her own long hair.

The title does not prepare the reader for the dark tale told in the poem. On the first read, one expects to read a romantic poem, perhaps about a romantic male hero. Browning inverts this expectation by what he actually creates: a lunatic who imagines himself to be Porphyria's lover, then destroys her in murderous passion.

As with much Victorian poetry, a mood is created by the setting:

The rain set early in to-night

The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

And did its worst to vex the lake:

I listened with heart fit to break.

Because this setting is evoked by the mad narrator, the reader cannot be sure that any of this is so. He could be describing the actual weather, or the state of his own mind. Notice how he gives the elements feelings and personality: "sullen wind," "tore the elms down for spite," and "vex the lake."

Porphyria then enters and "shut the cold out and the storm...and made the cheerless grate / Blaze up, and all the cottage warm." Her presence brings comfort and warmth, both literal and spiritual.

She tries to reach the narrator by speaking his name, but he does not respond. Instead of accounting for his silence, he says, "When no voice replied," implying a sense of distance from himself. "No voice" indicates that he may perceive multiple voices within, none of which are personalized. 

He is only responsive to her touch. He hears her "murmuring" her love, but again, one cannot be certain if she is saying this or if he is merely hearing it. If she is saying it, the narrator's understanding may be incorrect. After the clause, "Murmuring how she loved me," there is a break in the narrative and the tone shifts to something more hostile:

Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,

To set its struggling passion free

From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

And give herself to me forever.

He finds fault with her for not being his. However, on this night, her passion prevailed. She left "a gay feast" to be with him; therefore, she must worship him, he concludes. This latter realization causes the narrator to "[debate] what to do." In this moment, she becomes his: "mine, mine, fair / Perfectly pure and good..." In wanting to preserve her in this state of "perfection," he decides to kill her by strangulation. He takes her "yellow hair," which before had "spread, o'er all," and winds it in "one long yellow string." He concludes that she felt no pain: "I am quite sure she felt no pain." In his madness, he not only justifies murder, but also fails to empathize with Porphyria's fear and pain.

He determines that there is still a bit of life left in her, but this bit belongs to him:

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

I warily oped her lids: again

Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

"Without a stain" indicates her purity.

And I untightened next the tress  

About her neck; her cheek once more

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

She is now responsive to his affection, he thinks. The final line here is alliterative. The repeated "b" sound mimics the beating of the narrator's heart. 

Now, her head rests on his shoulder. In forcing her body to assume this position, the narrator also reasserts control, whereas before, with her as his nurse, he had none. 

He believes that now she is free to abandon all that didn't matter to her, though the narrator imposes upon her his own disdain for socializing (e.g., the gay feast). He asserts that it was her "darling one wish" for things to be so. The poem ends with the two sitting together in silence ("we have not stirred").

The final line evokes a sense of the narrator's conscience: "And yet God has not said a word!" This line, which has a tone of astonishment, can be read in a couple of ways. First, it could be the narrator, finally realizing that he has done wrong and expressing astonishment at the fact that God has not intervened and shown His disapproval at what transpired. This conclusion is helped by the use of the adverb "yet." Second, it could be his astonishment that God has not expressed his approval for this macabre union. 

Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" is not only about friendship and love, but also about how friendship and love can protect people during times of uncertainty and crisis. "Dover Beach" anticipates the existential crises of Modernism. The poem evokes feelings of sadness, "human misery," and loneliness. 

The narrator regards the sea and the cliffs in the distance from within a house. He encourages his love to come to the window and breathe the night-air. He takes note of the ebb and flow of the sea, and how the tide "[draws] back" and flings pebbles, only to return them "up the high strand." Metaphorically, the pebbles could stand in for human souls, which are introduced into the world, then drawn back from whence they came, then, possibly, brought back to the world again. (I am not sure if Matthew Arnold gave any credence to reincarnation.) This understanding of pebbles as human souls is echoed by the second stanza in which he compares his own hearing of the sea to that of Sophocles:

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery;

There is something eternal in the sea and in our observations of it. However, the narrator's observations are decidedly pessimistic, as demonstrated by "the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery" and his evocation of Sophocles, an ancient tragedian.

Much of the misery has to do with the dismissal of faith:

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.

Faith, when it was universal, gave hope and created order -- hence the simile which likens it to "a bright girdle." Moreover, it gave people hope because it created order. He contrasts this time gone by to his own, which anticipates modernity and its discontents:

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

The adverb "only" signifies that the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar," is the sole sound left in the world. It echoes the narrator's spiritual loneliness. A "roar" could be a sound of anger or power or both. However, this roar is "melancholy" and "withdrawing," which signifies a loss of power. The world is, thus, left "naked," like the pebbled beaches which lose their pebbles to the tide. Arnold draws a parallel between these bare beaches and the now bare human spirit whose loss of faith has made it difficult to find meaning in life.

In the last stanza, Arnold calls out to his love (or, perhaps, to love in general) and commits himself to him/her as his saving grace:

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, no love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

Their youthful optimism infuses them with a sense of the world being a realm of abundance, which is emphasized by the repetition of the adverb "so." However, it is truly a place of lack and absence, which is emphasized by "neither" and "nor."

They sit together "on a darkling plain," or in the dark. The darkness is both literal, for it is night, and metaphorical: the world is a dark, unhappy place. However, their companionship ("we are here") offers some respite from it. 

The last two lines evoke an atmosphere of war:

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Hence, the companions sit in contrast to the atmosphere of hostility. Moreover, they are "true," whereas the armies are "ignorant" and "confused." Their stillness is also countered by the armies' "struggle and flight."