waiting for the spark from heaven to fall

with lambchops that rival the wooliness of an actual lamb, matthew arnold wrote some of the most arrogant, yet insightful criticism of the victorian era. arrogant in that he had the chops to criticize shakespeare; insightful in that is considered the first modernist critic and therefore influenced pimps like t.s eliot. any way you chop it, arnold was ahead of his time. despite my love/hate relationship with his literary criticism, i have to admit that the guy could write some pretty amazing poetry. behold "dover beach," the kind of poem for people who wear suits to the beach and prefer to contemplate death instead of boogie boarding or building sandcastles for crabs to inhabit. you know these people - you may even be one of them. and on that note, this one's for you. please to enjoy...

"Resolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery." (Matthew Arnold)

DOVER BEACH

By Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight,
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-blanched 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 Agean, 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.