(no subject)
i have loved this poem since a child...sigh. heard a friend is visiting the white cliffs of dover right now and it made me think of matthew arnold.
DOVER BEACH
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight,
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 Agean, 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, 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.
1867
DOVER BEACH
By Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm tonight,
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 Agean, 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, 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.
1867