| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
| |
| Dover Beach |
| | | Matthew Arnold (1822–88) |
| |
| |
| 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. | 5 |
| Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! | |
| Only, from the long line of spray | |
| Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d sand, | |
| Listen! you hear the grating roar | |
| Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| |
| 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, | 25 |
| Retreating, to the breath | |
| Of the night-winds, 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 | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| Swept with confus’d alarms of struggle and flight, | |
| Where ignorant armies clash by night. | |
| |
|
|
|
