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.
Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet, social critic and inspector of schools. Traditionally believed to have been written on his honeymoon in 1851, Dover Beach is one of his best loved and most frequently quoted poems.