Dover Beach

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."

 

This poem was inspired by Arnold's trip to the South Coast of England with his wife. The poem itself is about how Christianity is unable to rise above the tide of scientific discovery. He is worried for the future of Christianity.

 

This poem also brushes on the mindset of "nature's beauty is a distraction from the misery of being alive." when he describes the cliffs in the first paragraph it seems like a beautiful scene which is ended when a "eternal note of sadness" is brought in reminding the writer of his original emotion of sadness.