The state of life

Dalrymple is the best, sometimes for no reason other than the poetry he quotes. Concluding his essay on relativism in social standards, he writes

Unfortunately, the solipsistic pursuit of happiness by people who live in close proximity to one another can, indeed often does, result in conflict. And thus it is that we come to create a hostile environment for ourselves:

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.

That is from "Dover Beach," by Matthew Arnold; it has the more famous lines about the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the sea of faith. Everyone has heard the phrase "darkling plain" but I at least had not read the poem before. The poem seems to struggle a little as a whole, but these lines are powerful and deeply moving.

The quoted passage omits a line and a half, "Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!" The omitted text clearly links the poem to the topos of Catullus 5, which has the beautiful lines "nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux / nox est perpetua una dormienda": when our brief light has once set, our night is one unending sleeping.

So da mihi basia mille, milia multa: let's kiss, a thousand, many thousand times. I would have thought pop music, being mostly about love, would use so potent an idea often, but the closest song I know of is Crowded House in "It's Only Natural":

Ice will melt, water will boil
You and I can shake off this mortal coil
It's bigger than us
You don't have to worry about it.
...
It's only natural
That I should want to be there with you.
It's only natural
That you should feel the same way too.

Arnold and Catullus have by far the better of the idea, though. They tell their lovers, you do have to worry about the clash of armies on the darkling plain; it will tear up and lay claim to your life. You will sleep one unending sleep, your day will end. Life has no beauty, no truth, no faith, no eternity, but what you choose to make with me.