Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold Poem

by
  1. The sea is calm tonight.
  2. The tide is full, the moon lies fair
  3. Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
  4. Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
  5. Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
  6. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
  7. Only, from the long line of spray
  8. Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
  9. Listen! you hear the grating roar
  10. Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
  11. At their return, up the high strand,
  12. Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
  13. With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
  14. The eternal note of sadness in.
  15. Sophocles long ago
  16. Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
  17. Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
  18. Of human misery; we
  19. Find also in the sound a thought,
  20. Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
  21. The Sea of Faith
  22. Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
  23. Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
  24. But now I only hear
  25. Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
  26. Retreating, to the breath
  27. Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
  28. And naked shingles of the world.
  29. Ah, love, let us be true
  30. To one another! for the world, which seems
  31. To lie before us like a land of dreams,
  32. So various, so beautiful, so new,
  33. Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
  34. Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
  35. And we are here as on a darkling plain
  36. Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
  37. Where ignorant armies clash by night.