Dover Beach

	The sea is calm tonight.
	The tide is full, the moon lies fair
	Upon the straights; 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 Aegean, 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.


			- Matthew Arnold, 1867