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.
　　
　　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 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.