Dover Beach (Arnold, set by S. Barber, E. Cone, R. Field, B. Gilmore, A. Goodhart, J. Jarrett, M. Johnstone, M. Kalmanoff, R. Russell, R. Vaughan Williams) (The Lied and Art Song Texts Page: Texts and Translations to Lieder, mélodies, canzoni, and other classical vocal music)


The sea is calm tonight, 
The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
Upon the straights; on the French coast the light 
Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimm'ring 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 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.

Input by Peter Duyster

Authorship

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

New Poems

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)

Edward Toner Cone (1917-)

Robin Field (1935-)

Hearth-Songs

Bernard H. Gilmore (1937-)

Arthur Murray Goodhart (1905-1955)

Jack Maurice Jarrett (1934-)

Maurice Johnstone (1900-1976)

Martin Kalmanoff (1920-)

Robert Russell (1933-)

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Available translations (or transliterations, if applicable):

GER

German

Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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