Poetry is also a beach read. Poems about the beach, much like the sandy shores themselves, ask you to do something that many find impossible to do anywhere else. Slow down. The water’s edge, where two worlds meet and overlap, has been drawing in poets for as long as people have been writing verse. It’s a perfect space to sit and think as the waves crash in rhythm against the shore. It’s a perfect metaphor for change, comings and goings, and a vastness that’s impossible to comprehend. From the smallest hermit crab in the sand to the wide open sky across the horizon, poems about the beach transports readers to where the earth meets the water. Where they have permission to pause and appreciate what is around them. Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams 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 sprayWhere the sea meets the moon-blanched land,Listen! you hear the grating roarOf pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,At