Kent Beach

 The sea is calm this night,
 The tide is full, the moon lies fair
 Down on the Straits;--on the French coast, the light
 Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of our isle stand,
 With glints and vast, out in the quite still bay.
 Come to the door, for sweet is the night air!
 Just now, from the long line of spray
 Where the ebb meets the moon-blanched sand,
 List! you can hear the great grind roar
 Of small rocks which the waves suck back, and fling,
 When they come back, up the high strand,
 Start up, and cease, and then once more start up,
 With a weak sound that's slow, and bring
 The gods' own sad note in.

 Some old man long since
 Heard it on the Greek sea, and it brought
 To his mind the roiled ebb and flow
 Of man's own angst; we
 Find it too in the sound of a thought,
 Hear it here by this far off north sea.

 The sea of faith
 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
 Lay like the folds of a bright skirt furled;
 But now I just hear
 Its sort of sad, long, drawn out roar,
 As it goes back to the breath
 Of the north wind down the vast edge drear
 And the bare stone shores of the world.

 Ah, love, let us be true
 To each, both you and me! for the world, which seems
 To lie in front of us like a land of dreams,
 So much of it, so nice, so new,
 Just does not have joy, nor love, nor light,
 Nor a thing that's sure, nor peace, nor help for pain;
 And we are here as on a dark plain
 Swept with the who knows what sounds of strife and flight,
 Where the what knows who troops clash by night.

                                -- Matt Arn

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