DOVER BEACH

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

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,

At their return, up the high strand,

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

The eternal note of sadness in.

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring






Sophocles long ago




Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

Find also in the sound a thought,






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,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,