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Welcome ♥


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.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Dover Beach ♥

"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 land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves drawback, 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 Agaean, 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.”
- Dover Beach by Mathew Arnold

I love this poem. I love it so much that it is always there when you open up this website.

I love it ♥

Sometimes I wonder why I like it so much. It’s certainly not the best of poems, not the most famous or infamous, or even notorious. However I find it beautiful, stimulating, desolate somehow. Although this dramatic monologue/ elegy is written in free verse, there is a sense of cadence to it, a rhythmic flow of melancholic ideas dispersed upon the page that Arnold engraved his thoughts on. The fundamental significance of the poem is essentially that; challenges to the validity of long-standing theological and moral precepts have shaken the faith of people in God as well as religion. Bearing in mind that Arnold lived around the mid-1800’s, this little detail makes this precise poem all the more intriguing. The pillar of faith that was predestined to support society for centuries, was ultimately crumbling. The credence and weight of science and evolution impacted belief systems throughout the world. I mean, once believing that we were all put on this globe as a consequence of the sins of Adam and Eve, then having that whole perception shattered and molded into a new perspective of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. I'm sure that made someone roll around in their grave for a while, if not at least turned some heads.

My speculation is that even the most divine and pious of people would at least have their concealed intimate thoughts shaken. Consequently the very idea of religion and the existence of a God was very much in doubt… Therefore the dying of the beam of faith is symbolized in this elegy as the persona – Arnold himself- sees the once gleaming, now dimming light, on the coasts of France. Ultimately, Arnold sustained his confidence and devotion to God and religion, exclusively his elected path of Christianity… Although I cannot pronounce the same conclusiveness for others as secularism took hold and brought forth our world as we know it today.

So enlighten me, what is it that you believe? Would you disregard everything that has been enforced and drilled into you since the day that you were put on this earth? – Since the day you started existing? Or would you sever the ties that formed with time from age old traditions of prophets, myths, legends and folklore and embrace the innovative dawn of science and technology.

Tell me, do you believe?
  

xoxo

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