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The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full. The tide 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 blanched land. Listen, you hear the great in rule 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 of 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 filled.

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,

...