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-blanch'd 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 Aegaean, 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 furl'd.
              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.