Dover
Beach
by Matthew
Arnold
|
The sea is calm to-night. |
The tide is full, the moon lies
fair |
Upon the straits; - on the French
coast the light |
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of
England stand, |
Glimmering and vast, out in the
tranquil bay. |
Come to the window, sweet is the
night-air! |
Only, from the long line of spray |
Where the sea meets the
moon-blanched land, |
Listen! you hear the grating roar |
Of pebbles which the waves draw
back, and fling, |
At their return, up the high
strand, |
Begin, and cease, and then again
begin, |
With tremulous cadence slow, and
bring |
The eternal note of sadness in.
|
Sophocles long ago |
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it
brought |
Into his mind the turbid ebb and
flow |
Of human misery; we |
Find also in the sound a thought, |
Hearing it by this distant
northern sea.
|
The Sea of Faith |
Was once, too, at the full, and
round earth's shore |
Lay like the folds of a bright
girdle furled. |
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.
|
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, not 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.
|
Matthew Arnold | Classic
Poems |