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 Aegean, 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.