Areopagus Volume XXXVIII

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the thirty eighth volume of the Areopagus. I've been at the seaside this week and the ocean is on my mind. So where better to begin than with Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, first published in 1867?

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-blanched 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.

That was just the first stanza; I thoroughly recommend reading it in full. Alas, the tide waits for no man! So said King Cnut the Great, who tied himself to a chair on the shores of his kingdom to prove that no human, however great thei…