Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!
Edgar Allen Poe, To Helen, 1845
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.
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.
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, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach, 1867
☙
Descendant of:
MYTHOLOGY AND THE CLASSICAL WORLDTexts with this theme:
- Amphiaraos, D 166
- Hektors Abschied, D 312
- Hermann und Thusnelda, D 322
- Klage der Ceres, D 323
- Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren, D 360
- An Schwager Kronos, D 369
- Die vier Weltalter, D 391
- Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, D 65, D 396, D 583
- Die Liebesgötter, D 446
- Fragment aus dem Aeschylus, D 450
- Lied des Orpheus, als er in die Hölle ging, D 474
- Leiden der Trennung, D 509
- Fahrt zum Hades, D 526
- Philoktet, D 540
- Memnon, D 541
- Antigone und Oedip, D 542
- Ganymed, D 544
- Orest, D 548
- Uraniens Flucht, D 554
- Iphigenia, D 573
- Atys, D 585
- Elysium, D 51, D 53, D 54, D 57, D 58, D 60, D 584
- Sonett (Apollo, lebet noch dein hold Verlangen), D 628
- Prometheus, D 674
- Strophe aus “Die Götter Griechenlands”, D 677
- Der entsühnte Orest, D 699
- Der zürnenden Diana, D 707
- Grenzen der Menschheit, D 716
- An die Leier, D 737
- Heliopolis I, D 753
- Heliopolis II, D 754
- Dithyrambe, D 47, D 801