Dover Beach

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.