{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/dover-beach",
 "title": "Dover Beach",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Poems",
 "book_slug": "new-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1867,
  "venue": "New Poems (1867)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoems00arno"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/matthew-arnold_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27739",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmatthewar00arnouoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofm00arn",
   "https://archive.org/details/inmemoriamawrea00marsgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 37,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The sea is calm to-night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tide is full, the moon lies fair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the Straits;⁠—on the French coast, the light",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only, from the long line of spray",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch’d sand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Listen! you hear the grating roar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At their return, up the high strand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Begin, and cease, and then again begin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With tremulous cadence slow, and bring",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The eternal note of sadness in.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sophocles long ago",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of human misery; we",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Find also in the sound a thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hearing it by this distant northern sea.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The sea of faith",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But now I only hear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Retreating to the breath",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And naked shingles of the world.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah, love, let us be true",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To one another! for the world, which seems",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To lie before us like a land of dreams,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So various, so beautiful, so new,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And we are here as on a darkling plain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where ignorant armies clash by night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}