The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies
Upon the straits;—on the French coast the
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
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating
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
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long
Heard it on the
Egean, and it
Into his mind the turbid ebb and
Of human misery;
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be
To one another! for the world, which
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
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
