Lyrics Dover Beach - Kitty Whately, Joseph Middleton, Samuel Barber

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 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