The Fugs - Dover Beach THE DOVER BEACH The Fugs
The sea is calm tonight.
High tide. The white moon lies
over the strait; on the French coast the glow
shines and fades; the cliffs of England rise
sparkling and vast in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of foam
Where the sea meets the moon-bleached land,
Listen! hear the shrill roar
Of the pebbles, which the waves drag and throw,
Returning, to the high shore of the sea,
It begins and ceases, and then begins again,
With a slow tremulous cadence, and carries
With it the eternal note of sadness.
Sophocles, in ancient times
heard it on the Aegean, and it brought back
to his mind the turbulent tide
of human misery; and we find
likewise in that sound a thought,
hearing it on this remote northern sea.
The Sea of Faith,
was once, at high tide; and around
the shores of the Earth it lay, enclosed
like the folds of a shining belt.
But now I feel nothing
but its melancholy, a long rumble
that retreats to the breath of the night wind,
down the vast and fearful edges
and over the bare pebbles of the world.
Ah, my love, let us remain faithful
to each other! for the world, which seems
to stretch out before us like a land of dreams,
so varied, so splendid, so new,
actually possesses neither joy, nor love, nor light,
nor certainty, nor peace, nor relief in sorrow;
And we are here, as in a darkening plain
battling between confusion and alarms of struggles and flights,
where ignorant armies clash by night.
