The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The famous poem The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Genres: Poetry

1 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 23, 1879

About the author

Extremely popular works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet, in the United States in his lifetime, include The Song of Hiawatha in 1855 and a translation from 1865 to 1867 of Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow educated. His originally wrote the "Paul Revere's Ride" and "Evangeline." From New England, he first completed work of the fireside.

Bowdoin College graduated Longefellow, who served as a professor, afterward studied in Europe, and later moved at Harvard. After a miscarriage, Mary Potter Longfellow, his first wife, died in 1835. He first collected Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841).

From teaching, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow retired in 1854 to focus on his writing in the headquarters of of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the Revolutionary War for the remainder.

Dress of Frances Appleton Longfellow, his second wife, caught fire; she then sustained burns and afterward died in 1861. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing and focused on from foreign languages.

Longfellow wrote musicality of many known lyrics and often presented stories of mythology and legend. He succeeded most overseas of his day. He imitated European styles and wrote too sentimentally for critics.

Reviews

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This contemplative poem probes into the rich tapestry of human life. It does so by juxtaposing the ephemeral nature of individual lives with the enduring legacies we leave behind.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Through discernments, philosophical musings, and a profound observation of life’s subtleties, this poem disentangles the multifaceted chemistry between the fleeting seconds of our individual experiences and the permanent influences they watermark on the wider human family.

Longfellow bids his readers to envisage the fervent inferences of our actions, thoughts, and connections, underscoring the power of ‘bequest’ within the innate impermanence of life.

As we navigate through words, and bond with the ephevarious viewpoints, from the metaphysical to the individual, the momentary nature of our own human journey apropos the immortality of nature, we get a confident attitude on how our evanescent existence can reverberate through the chronicles of history.

We are reminded of a set of lines from another celebrated poem, where the poet articulates:

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever…

Finally, the brook is on its way to be engrossed by the river, which is already huge and overflowing. The brook exhorts that while humans live small, stopgap lives, the brook itself will always withstand….

And we are also reminded of the following utterance of Vasudev Shri Krishna:

“कालो ऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत्प्रवृद्धो..... (I am Time, the great demolisher of the world ~ Bhagavad Gita 11.32)”

[John Yelverton · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you had told me that a poet could create a poem that mimicked the rising and falling of the ocean tide, I would not have believed you. Truly, this shows what a master of literature Longfellow was.

[Justine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though dismal at its core in regards to the fleeting and nonexistent legacy we as humans leave behind, The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls displays a lulling, rhythmic quality to it akin to the cadence of the ocean tide, rising and falling. It portrays the human life as finite—our legacies and our mark on time eventually being washed away by the waves—in comparison to the infinite, consistent cycle of nature. For nature carries on, indifferent to the outcomes of humanity.

[vin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a calm poem, I would honestly read way more pages of this. It's just a life that's around the tide, and how it's just repeating while the world around is changing. But also how it's always going to be there, while the people, animals are temporary. Wonderful poem.