MATTHEW ARNOLD

DOVER BEACH

THE sea is calm to-night.

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 blanch'd sand,
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 in 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 furl'd.

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.

PHILOMELA

HARK! ah, the nightingale —

The tawny-throated!

Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!

What triumph! hark! — what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,

Still, after many years, in distant lands,

Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain

That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world painSay, will it never heal?

And can this fragrant lawn

With its cool trees, and night,

And the sweet, tranquil Thames,

And moonshine, and the dew,

To thy rack'd heart and brain

Afford no balm?

Dost thou to-night behold,

Here, through the moonlight on this English grass,
The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?

Dost thou again peruse

With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame?

Dost thou once more essay

Thy flight, and feel come over thee,

Poor fugitive, the feathery change

Once more, and once more seem to make resound

With love and hate, triumph and agony,

Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?

Listen, Eugenia —

How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!

C. T. BATEMAN

A WIND-SWEPT SKY

A WIND-SWEPT sky,

The waste of moorland stretching to the west;

The sea, low moaning in a strange unrest
A seagull's cry.

Washed by the tide,

The rocks lie sullen in the waning light;

The foam breaks in long strips of hungry white, Dissatisfied.

ARLO BATES

THE POOL OF SLEEP

I DRAGGED my body to the pool of sleep,
Longing to drink; but ere my throbbing lip
From the cool flood one Dives-drop might sip,
The wave sank fluctuant to some unknown deep.
With aching eyes that could not even weep,
I saw the dark, deluding water slip,

Slow eddying down; the weeds and mosses drip
With maddening waste. I watched the sweet tide creep
A little higher, but to fall more fast.
Fevered and wounded in the strife of men

I burned with anguish, till, endurance past,
The fount crept upward; sank, and rose again,
Swelled slowly, slowly, slowly, — till at last
My seared lips met the soothing wave, and then .