I look forward with great anticipation to the Barber "Dover Beach." I am well familiar with Arnold's poem. In my undergrad class in Victorian Poetry we read this poem in juxtaposition to Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:"
"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!"Dover Beach:"
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin – his control
Stops with the shore; -- upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, not does remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown."
"Ah, love, let us be trueThey just don't write them like that anymore. They lack the knowledge, the discipline, and the grace to do so.
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."
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| "I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense." |