An Analysis of Henry Wadsworh Longf

An Analysis of Henry Wadsworh Longfellow's "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls."
The inevitability of death can be a daunting prospect. However, instead of being terrified, some find comfort in the promise of death. Like the tide of the ocean or the phases of the moon, one can take solace in such predictability. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow explains this in his poem, "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls." In Longfellow's life, he wrote many meaningful poems such as "The Psalm of Life," which in contrast to "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls," speaks of the promise of life and all it holds. "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" was written near the end of his life. In said poem, the rhyme scheme is AABBA, and as could be understood from reading the first stanza, "falls, calls, brown, town, falls." The meter of this poem goes between tetrameter and pentameter, eight to ten syllables per line. Longfellow fills this poem with a variety of hidden treasures, much like the majesty called the ocean.
The traveler in this poem is wiped away from the world and "their soft, white hands" symbolize time, innocent and unchanging. Though all physical evidence of the traveler is washed away, the ocean remembers with each wave, coming and going, just like man. Longfellow uses "the sea…calls" as a figure of speech. The sea does not actually call and yet, for some unknown reason, all forms of life are drawn to it and its beauty. The imagery of the ocean and its beach had a certain verisimilitude to it. One can feel the darkness of the night descending upon them when one reads "The twilight darkens," or the feel of the mud-like sand between one's toes, once one reads "the sea sands damp and brown."