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