The sea is calm to-night.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits;—on the French coast the lightGleams 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 sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf 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 bringThe eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long agoHeard it on the Aegean, and it broughtInto his mind the turbid ebb and flowOf human misery; weFind also in the sound a thought,Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of FaithWas once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shoreLay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo 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 plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach

Mr. R, my twelfth-grade English teacher, acted amazed that my seventeen-year-old self was swept up in the senti-mentality of “Dover Beach.” He was a cynic. Still, despite the criticism, there is something in this

poem—the imagery of the sea at high tide, the full moon on the sand—the way the words, when read aloud, mimic the sound they are describing, the emptiness evoked by a line like “the eternal note of sadness.” The power of this poem wasn’t in what it meant but how it evoked. Later, as a teacher myself, I realized that the couple in the poem has just had a fight. The poet fears a separation. They are the ones “swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight.” He retreats to the win-dow and expresses the desire for them to stand together against an otherwise-dis-enchanting world. Anyone who’s experienced an exquisite connectedness with another human being knows the dread of losing it. Mr. R has gone the way of the retreat-ing tide (though we did have letters and phone calls before he died). “Dover Beach” might not be the most profound piece he taught his students, but forty-two years later, I’m still talking about it. That’s got to mean something.

Matthew Arnold is considered to be one of the great English Victo-rian poets. His poetry is meditative and often focuses on psychological

isolation. He was also a literary and social critic. His essays address issues such as religious faith, morals, education, and literary standards.

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Poem of the Week

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Matthew Arnold(1822-1888)

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Douglas GrudzinaSENIOR NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST

One evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image of The Pleasure that Abideth for a Moment. And he went forth into the world to look for bronze. For he could think only

in bronze.

But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor any-

where in the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save

only the bronze of the image of The Sorrow that Endureth

Forever.

Now this image he had himself, and with his own

hands, fashioned, and had set it on the tomb of the one

thing he had loved in life. On the tomb of the dead

thing he had most loved had he set this image of his

own fashioning, that it might serve as a sign of the

love of man that dieth not, and a symbol of the sor-

row of man that endureth forever. And in the whole

world there was no other bronze save the bronze of

this image.

And he took the image he had fashioned, and set

it in a great furnace, and gave it to the fire.

And out of the bronze of the image of The Sorrow

that Endureth Forever he fashioned an image of The

Pleasure that Abideth for a Moment.

The ArtistP

oem

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kPoem of the Week

b y O s c a r W i l d e

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Magedah ShaboSTAFF WRITER

As a prose poem, Oscar Wilde’s “The Artist” combines the concision and lyricism of poetry with the verseless narrative structure of a short story or fable. With a few simple images, it strikes deep—as any good poem should do. On one level, the story may seem to describe the creative temperament in particular, which Wilde embodied perfectly. Indeed, Wilde seemed to see “The Artist” as somewhat autobi-ographical, at least after the fact; in De Profundis, he would name it among several of his works that seemed to presage later developments in his life and his perspective on suffering. Even so, the story’s protagonist is also unmistakably an everyman, embodying a universal human experi-ence. Like the statue the Artist creates in the narrative, the prose poem is itself an ironic celebration of a tragic but seemingly inescapable human ex-change: the eternal for the transient, the substance for the shadow.

Born in Ireland, Oscar Wilde was a dramatist, novelist, and poet. He lead an aesthetic movement in Britain that emphasized an ideal of “art for art’s sake,” empha-

sizing beauty above didactic or political goals in the arts. Best

known for his play The Importance of Being Earnest and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde enjoyed great success during the 1890s. Towards the end of his brief life, however, he experienced notoriety and imprison-ment, which inspired his famous letter on suffering that has been published under the title De Profundis, Latin for “from the depths.”

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Halted against the shade of a last hill,

They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease

And, finding comfortable chests and knees

Carelessly slept. But many there stood still

To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,

Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled

By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,

For though the summer oozed into their veins

Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains,

Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,

Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field —

And the far valley behind, where the buttercups

Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,

Where even the little brambles would not yield,

But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;

They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word

At which each body and its soul begird

And tighten them for battle. No alarms

Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste —

Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced

The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.

O larger shone that smile against the sun, —

Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together

Over an open stretch of herb and heather

Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned

With fury against them; and soft sudden cups

Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes

Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place

Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up

On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,

Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,

Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence’ brink

Ventured but drave too swift to sink.

The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,

And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames

With superhuman inhumanities,

Long-famous glories, immemorial shames —

And crawling slowly back, have by degrees

Regained cool peaceful air in wonder —

Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

Spring Offenxive

In college, I took a World War I poetry class with an older professor. A lovely British gentleman, the professor was not so old as to have fought in the War, but he read the poem with such conviction that it was as if he was reminiscing on his days spent in the trenches. I remember listening to him read aloud in class and thinking

that the imagery in the poem was absolute-ly amazing. Lines like, “Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world” and “For though the summer oozed into their veins / Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains, / Sharp on their souls hung the imminent of grass, / Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass” certainly caught my attention at 8:00 on a Monday morning. The juxtaposition between life and death, war and peace sets the scene for a battle that holds no promise of glory. Suddenly, every-thing is weighted against these soldiers—even nature itself. Where there was once peace and beauty, now, there is death and destruction. The narrator then returns to po-etic imagery: The soldiers become superhu-man, rushing into hell as if they were legends from Greek mythology. Finally, tranquility returns, and the soldiers are free to breathe the cool, fresh air. However, the beauty of the world never quite returns to them, as they have witnessed the loss of their friends who never made it out of hell. Ultimately, Owen paints the picture of an epic tale that pokes holes in its own grandeur. War is not the glorified and majestic story of legend; rather, it is an unimaginable nightmare that soldiers can never escape.

Wilfred Owen was known for his gruesome and realistic portrayals of life in the trenches during World War I. After being hos-pitalized for injuries sustained

on the battlefield, Owen returned to the front line in July of 1918.

Sadly, he was killed in action one week before the signing of the Armistice of Compiègne, which brought an end to World War I.

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Poem of the Week b y W i l f r e d O w e n

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

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Amanda BrandsSTAFF WRITER

Should the wide world roll away,

Leaving black terror,

Limitless night,

Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand

Would be to me essential,

If thou and thy white arms were there,

And the fall

to doom

a long

way.

Should the Wide World Roll Away

Crane, who is much better known for his Naturalist fiction, especially The Red Badge of Courage and The Open Boat, also wrote a few volumes of poetry, which were not well received during his life. Most of his poetry was untitled and individual poems became known by their first lines. He draws on themes of death, war, and sin in many of them,

but this one, “Should the Wide World Roll Away,” combines existentialist gloom with love.

Beginning with a conditional, Should, Crane describes a fearful (non)existence of unend-ing darkness and horror, empty of God and any physical aspects like gravity or light. The anaphora of nor emphasizes the desolation the poet feels about this nihilistic apocalypse. The only rhymes are the internal man/stand and be/me, but the poem also contains a few instances of alliteration, antithesis, and assonance.

Next is another conditional term, Would; it re-inforces the insecurity that surrounds the poem and leads to the final qualifier, If. This word brings the reader to the climax of the poem: how the poet could withstand this emptiness.

The final two lines completely negate the forces of death and disaster. These lines claim that the power achieved through love can over-come the end of the Universe. This horrid world the poet predicts can be endured because his lover could protect him from it. They would fall for an infinitely long time, but they would be together. The final portion contradicts the horrific potential of the beginning, showing that love is stronger than death.

The only word in the whole poem that can be considered positive is white, symbolic of purity, yet Crane has constructed a poem that is, unabashedly, upbeat.

Stephen Crane’s work continues to fascinate readers because, in addi-tion to the power of what he said or the situations and characters he created, the philosophy expressed in his novels and, especially, in his poetry is entirely modern.

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Poem of the Week

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Stephen Crane(1871-1900)

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Paul MolikenSENIOR EDITOR