What Does "Darkling" Mean?

By Dusk Peterson

"Darkling" is a medieval word that means "dark" or "dim." The most famous use of it is in Matthew Arnold's 1867 poem "Dover Beach." In that poem, Arnold says that people who love each other must be faithful to one another because the world is filled with uncertainty, ignorance, and battles:
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.
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