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Saturday, June 2, 2007

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
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch'd sand,
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.

by Matthew Arnold

4 comments:

  1. I recited this in a speech contest as a school girl and beat out all the other competitors. That last verse, so famous, and sadly as true now as it was then. Nothing has changed.

    A fitting selection to accompany your inspiring article on Trinity sunday.

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  2. +JMJ+

    I'm very familiar with the last verse of Dover Beach because it is featured in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

    POSSIBLE SPOILER

    The main character, Montag, reveals his stash of forbidden books to his wife and some of her friends. They react the way some people would at a party if someone revealed a stash of hard drugs: a little nervous, a little curious, a little more reckless than usual. So they ask him to read something aloud for them. He opens a book at random and reads the last verse of Dover Beach.

    Though his guests do not really understand what it means, it greatly distresses them. And these are characters not used to strong emotions of any sort! One of them even starts crying . . .

    Given the context and all, it's not a bad poem for Bradbury to pick, aye? :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, Enthrethiliel, that adds a whole new light on the words. I have seen the film with Julie Christie but have never read the original Bradbury story.

    ReplyDelete

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