Lyric Poem · Love
Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold · 1867
1The sea is calm to-night.
2The tide is full, the moon lies fair
3Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
4Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
5Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
6Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
7Only, from the long line of spray
8Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
9Listen! you hear the grating roar
10Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
11At their return, up the high strand,
12Begin and cease, and then again begin,
13With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
14The eternal note of sadness in.
15Sophocles long ago
16Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
17Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
18Of human misery: we
19Find also in the sound a thought,
20Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
21The sea of faith
22Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
23Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
24But now I only hear
25Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
26Retreating, to the breath
27Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
28And naked shingles of the world.
29Ah, love, let us be true
30To one another! for the world, which seems
31To lie before us like a land of dreams,
32So various, so beautiful, so new,
33Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
34Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
35And we are here as on a darkling plain
36Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
37Where ignorant armies clash by night.
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“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold — quilloak.com/poems/dover-beach
Quick facts
- Poem
- Dover Beach
- Poet
- Matthew Arnold
- Published
- 1867
- Length
- 37 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Love, Life, Sad
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 37 lines · 4 stanzas of 6–14 lines
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the cited edition and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Matthew Arnold1822–1888
- Source record
- WikisourceDover Beach by matthew-arnold, Wikisource transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1867
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 c69b1213089433e2…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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