Dover Beach - Kitty Whately, Joseph Middleton, Samuel Barber

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-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