Faith, faery and a short flattery

Ett försenat Movie Day-inlägg inleds med en lång dikt av Matthew Arnold och avslutas med ett kort Shakespearecitat.
I kväll fortsätter Poetry Slam Team Contest.

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Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

(Förekommer i The Anniversary Party från 2001. Regi: Alan Cumming, Jennifer Jason Leigh.)

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.

***

From The stolen child, by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

(Förekommer i A.I. : Artificial Intelligence från 2001. Regi: Steven Spielberg.)

Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim gray sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

***

From Venus and Adonis, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

(Förekommer i Intolerable Cruelty från 2003. Regi: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen.)

Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery;

  For where a heart is hard, they make no battery.’