Consider the poem “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold. In the last stanza, Arnold describes a world that remains very familiar to us, even over 150 years later. The “ignorant armies” of the final line describe today’s warfare just as aptly as the conflicts of his time.
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
Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
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.
We can tweak our understanding using poetic tools. In a later poem by Rilke, he begins with an invocation to god before abandoning religious overtones, despairing at the root of modern restlessness.
After the summer’s yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter;
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Day in Autumn” (translated by Mary Kinzie)
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city’s avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.
The first stanza of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” shares the same tone as Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”. The overall intuition of these authors was that the world is coming unstuck and unravelling, leaving the individual metaphorically homeless.
Come gather ’round, people, wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth saving
And you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times, they are a-changin’Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times, they are a-changin’Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times, they are a-changin’Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times, they are a-changin’The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast
Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times, they are a-changin’
Rilke’s metaphorical homelessness is also reflected in Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, which he expands with “with no direction home.” Rilke wrote about creeping homelessness, where there may or may not be an actual physical home. French philosopher Simone Weil echoes this in her L’Enracinement, prélude à une déclaration des devoirs envers l’être humain (English: The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind). There is a need for roots, and in our current world, these roots are often unattainable.
The movie Triumph of the Spirit depicts the life of Salamo Arouch, a Greek-Israeli boxer who survives Auschwitz by fighting in exchange for rations and protection for his family. His German “handler” Rauscher loses his mind and is shown in drunken maudlin hysteria, realizing that the war is lost, stumbling around killing people while reciting Rilke’s poem.
See also: Is Poetry Sometimes Informative in a Special Way? (which also discusses Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”)