Читаем The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2 полностью

The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

7. Shoals off the coast of North Africa. his habitual trading ports in the Greek islands. Like 8. Dark inhabitants of Spain and Portugal� the Scholar Gypsy, when similarly intruded on by perhaps associated with gypsies. hearty extroverts, he resolves to flee and seek a less 9. The elaborate simile of the final two stanzas has competitive sphere of life. been variously interpreted. The trader from Tyre (a The reference (line 249) to the Iberians as " shy Phoenician city, on the coast of what is now Leb-traffickers" (traders) is explained by Kenneth Allott anon) is disconcerted to see a new business rival, as having been derived from Herodotus's History"the merry Grecian coaster," emerging from one of (4.196). Herodotus describes a distinctive method

136 8 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

Dover Beach

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,

5 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

io 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.

is Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery;1 we

Find also in the sound a thought,

20 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.2

But now I only hear

25 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles3 of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

30 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,

of selling goods established by merchants from instance of dishonesty .. . on either side." For the Carthage who used to sail through the Strait of solitary Tyrian trader such a procedure, with its Gibraltar to trade with the inhabitants of the coast avoidance of "contact" (line 221), would have been of West Africa. The Carthaginians would leave especially appropriate. bales of their merchandise on display along the 1. A reference to a chorus in Antigone that combeaches and, without having seen their prospective pares human sorrow to the sound of the waves customers, would return to their ships. The shy moving the sand beneath them (lines 585-91). natives would then come down from their inland 2. This difficult line means, in general, that at hiding places and set gold beside the bales they high tide the sea envelops the land closely. Its wished to buy. When the natives withdrew in their forces are "gathered" up (to use William Words- turn, the Carthaginians would return to the beach worth's term) like the "folds" of bright clothing and decide whether payments were adequate, a ("girdle") that have been compressed ("furled"). At process repeated until agreement was reached. On ebb tide, as the sea retreats, it is unfurled and the Atlantic coasts this method of bargaining per-spread out. It still surrounds the shoreline but not sisted into the 19th century. As William Beloe, a as an "enclasping flow" (as in "To Marguerite� translator of the ancient Greek historian, noted in Continued").

1844: "In this manner they transact their exchange 3. Beaches covered with pebbles. without seeing one another, or without the least

STANZA S FRO M TH E GRAND E CHARTREUS E / 136 9 35Nor 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 armies4 clash by night. ca.1851 1867

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse1

Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused

With rain, where thick the crocus blows,

Past the dark forges long disused,

The mule track from Saint Laurent goes.

5 The bridge is crossed, and slow we ride,

Through forest, up the mountainside.

The autumnal evening darkens round,

The wind is up, and drives the rain;

While, hark! far down, with strangled sound

io Doth the Dead Guier's2 stream complain,

Where that wet smoke, among the woods,