Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (18331908). A Victorian Anthology, 18371895. 1895. |
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Dover Beach |
| Matthew Arnold (182288) |
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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-blanchd 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. | |
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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 |
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The sea of faith | |
Was once, too, at the full, and round earths shore | |
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furld. | |
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. | |
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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 confusd alarms of struggle and flight, | |
Where ignorant armies clash by night. | |
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