Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold portrait

1822 to 1888

Poem Image
Track 1

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At their return, up the high strand,
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
Retreating, to the breath
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
Ah, love, let us be true
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The sea is calm tonight.
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Sophocles long ago
And naked shingles of the world.
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Only, from the long line of spray
But now I only hear
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
The Sea of Faith
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
To one another! for the world, which seems
The eternal note of sadness in.

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Poet portrait