“A long long time ago, a young and exuberant romantic picked up a white smooth pebble by the shore, on an unusually gray and cold summer day. No blue sapphire nor gleaming diamond could surpass the value of that white small pebble.
He was penniless, and yet, holding in his hand was the most precious of treasures and bounty: the representation of a promise…”
So, I like to write stories that are never published. They live in my imagination. They may reflect my life experiences, stories my friends told me, stories that have laid dormant in my life, fantasies or fables. Who cares. However, whenever I read a poem or a story written by a famous author that reflects a flash of what I was thinking, I am fulfilled and tickled pink. The story of the alabaster stone is true. However, it was only a few days ago that I discovered this poem that awed me. Sharing just because.
DOVER BEACH
by Matthew Arnold
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.
Dum Spiro Spero 