Dover Beach

6 anni fa

What do you feel, think, imagine, when you read this poem?

Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold 
  
The sea is calm tonight, 
 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 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 Agean, 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.