Michael Appelt

Today’s poem is “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold — a timeless piece from 1867 that speaks with quiet power about a world losing its sense of unity. 

Arnold, a poet and cultural critic of the Victorian era, captured the feeling of a society drifting apart long before our modern age gave it new forms. His imagery of the calm moonlit sea, slowly revealing deeper currents of uncertainty and longing, still resonates deeply with us today.

I invite you to watch this episode. You’ll find hip/hop r&b reciting, English and German subtitles, and atmospheric visuals designed to enhance the mood of the poem and draw you further into its world.

... and thank you, Opa Cohen, for standing in!

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-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 Ægæan, 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 furl’d.
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.