Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/252

214 Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched 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 on 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 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.