Tuesday Poetry: Dover Beach (Excerpt) by Matthew Arnold, 1822 – 1888
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 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.
…
— by Matthew Arnold, 1822 – 1888
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Yesterday I posted a poem of Wellington’s Island Bay, so I thought today’s poem had to about the sea as well.
This is only the first stanza of a longer poem, but I think it captures the sense of the ocean and the ocean shore extremely well.
To learn more about the poet, see this excellent biography from the Academy of American Poets:
One of my favorites! I can picture the sea at night.
I agree, this first verse really captures the sense and sound of the sea. I also really like the clarity and simplicity of the poem’s language, which is relatively rare in Victorian poetry.