Poem

The Tide Rises, the tide falls.

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore.
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Pee Paragraph :

I think this poem is trying to tell us that when you have got ups or downs in life, you can’t do anything to change what has happened and you just to just carry on. I thought this because when he uses ‘The tide rises, the tide falls’, it makes me think of something that has ups and downs because the movement of the tides at sea is being compared to how humans like us have similar ups and downs. Sometimes we feel very happy (the tides go up high) and sometimes we feel very down (when the tide falls). For a moment, I thought that he was talking about the life span of a human and that we need to appreciate the time we have on the earth. I think this because the poet used lots of sentences like ‘The twilight darkens, the curlew calls’ it made me think that ‘Twilight darkens’ meant the face of death because if you compare your life to a battery for instance, you would notice the battery would get dimmer and dimmer and when its dim, its dead. And when he mentions ‘Curlew Calls’ its making me think that it means the call of death because a Curlew is a bird with a really long beak and it made me think of it as a call of death because to a lot of animals, its their predator. When the poet uses the sentence ‘The traveller hastens towards the town’ it made me think that its somebody out at sea trying to get back to shore to escape death because the words ‘hastens’ suggests that something or someone is moving or acting with haste or really rapid speed. I also feel that if you are at sea, why would you be hastening back to shore? Is it because you saw something, feel unsafe or feel that something is about to happen? And if you do feel like something is about to happen, it makes me think that your trying to get to shore for your safety or to escape danger. For me, the word ‘Traveller’ symbolises, any person. The tide symbolises time and life. And the journey of the traveller is the life we live. I think he used symbolism to describe a simple yet complex part of human nature which could be death or danger.

Poetic Techniques

The poet used these techniques to make the poem sound more interesting to read:

Repetition: The poet used this technique because it emphasizes the point. He wanted the picture to stay stuck in your mind because its like the ‘power’ of the poem in that he doesn’t want you to forget and wants to underline the message.
Rhyme: Used to make it catchy and memorable. It helps you to remember it, so it sticks with you longer and that if you use rhyme you would gain a songlike quality when you read it. For example: falls and calls, brown and town, etc
Alliteration: It helps make a line more memorable and gives the effect the poet intended. In some poems, a subject can use alliteration to almost describe how the subject is by the first letters of the words. For example if the subject was Snake, the poet would use lots of words beginning with an S - like slithery, slimy, scary etc.
Personification: The poet used personification because he wanted you to use empathy and he described it in a way that it would likely be in if it was human to give us a better understanding. An example of this would be “The little waves, with their soft, white hands”.

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Repitition
Rhyme
Alliteration
Personification