Monday, February 1, 2021

DOVER BEACH

Dover Beach BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

The sea is calm tonight. 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 Where the sea meets the moon-blanched 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 Ægean, 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 furled. 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.

It's the last line that summons Loki and Thor.

5 comments:

Coffee Man said...

beautiful.

OldAFSarge said...

Evocative.

HMS Defiant said...

I post it again every year. Ever since I read it I was struck by what it evokes. I didn't know the source the first time back in the early ages before internet and asked my B-I-L the English professor and he was right out there with Matthew Arnold. I first read it I think in a book cowritten by David Brin, Heart of the Comet. Very excellent good book.

HMS Defiant said...

From the first time I read it.

HMS Defiant said...

I looked for it for a long while. It took my brother in law, the English prof to tell me was a poem by Matthew Arnold. I had read it in a book you see and it was not documented. Heart of the Comet it was by Brin et al.