Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
b"Arnold read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\\n\\nGiving voice to classic poetry.\\n\\n---------------------------------------------------\\n\\nDover Beach\\nby Matthew Arnold (1822 \\u2013 1888) \\n\\nThe sea is calm to-night.\\nThe tide is full, the moon lies fair\\nUpon the straits; on the French coast the light\\nGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;\\nGlimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.\\nCome to the window, sweet is the night-air!\\nOnly, from the long line of spray\\nWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,\\nListen! you hear the grating roar\\nOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,\\nAt their return, up the high strand,\\nBegin, and cease, and then again begin,\\nWith tremulous cadence slow, and bring\\nThe eternal note of sadness in.\\n\\nSophocles long ago\\nHeard it on the A gaean, and it brought\\nInto his mind the turbid ebb and flow\\nOf human misery; we\\nFind also in the sound a thought,\\nHearing it by this distant northern sea.\\n\\nThe Sea of Faith\\nWas once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore\\nLay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.\\nBut now I only hear\\nIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,\\nRetreating, to the breath\\nOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drear\\nAnd naked shingles of the world.\\n\\n\\nAh, love, let us be true\\nTo one another! for the world, which seems\\nTo lie before us like a land of dreams,\\nSo various, so beautiful, so new,\\nHath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,\\nNor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;\\nAnd we are here as on a darkling plain\\nSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,\\nWhere ignorant armies clash by night."