Other Poems Concerning the Sea

The Sea's Moods - Laura Johnson

Green, blue, gray and black
many moods it can have
happy and calme, mad and anxious
as the waves crash

stormy seas, stormy seas
turning the sky black
in its rage
in its fury
it makes boats crack

when it's sad
gray the water turns
making the clouds shed tears
it makes boats turn away
to head back to the piers

happy, blissful, joy and all
a nice sunny sky
compliments the clear blue water
the sea creatures rolling in the waves
as they foam white on
the surface.





La Balada del Aqua del Mar - Federic Gracia Lorca

El mar
sonrie a lo lejos.
Dientes de espuma,
labios de cielo.

¿Qué vendes, oh joven turbia
con lossenos al aire?

Vendo, señor, el agua
de los mares.

¿Que llevas, oh negro joven,
mezclado con tu sangre?

Llevo, señor, el agua
de los mares.

Esas lágrimas salobres
¿de donde vienen, madre?

Lloro, señor, el agua
de los mares.

Corazon, y esta amargura
seria, ¿de donde nace?

¡Amarga much el agua
de los mares!

El mar
sonrie a lo lejos.
Dientes de espuma,
labios de cielo.

(A loose translation)

The Ballad of the Sea's Water - Federico Garcia Lorca

The sea smiles at it in the distance.,
The teeth foam, at the edge of the sky.

What are you selling?
Oh yound cloud with the hear of air.

Sell, sir, the water of the seas.

What to bring, oh dark youth,
Mixed with your blood?

Carry, sir, the water of the seas.

These salty tears,
Where do they come from, mother?

Weep, sir, the water of the seas.

Heart, and this bitterness,
Truly, where is it born?

So much bitter water of the seas!

The sea smiles at it in the distance.
The teeth foam, at the edge of the sky.





Among the Rocks - Robert Browning

Oh, good gigantic smile o'the brown old earth.
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
To bask i'the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet.

For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
If you loved only what were worth your love,
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for You:
Make the low nature better by your throes:
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!




Annabel Lee - Edgar Allen Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee,
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee,
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.



This is an excerpt from one of T.S. Eliot's quartets, Number 3:

The Dry Salvages - T.S. Eliot

The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men.
The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.

Conclusively: The Sea In Literature

In The Awakening, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Sea-Limits, it is evident that the Sea is a magnet for all kinds of people. The doubtful, the trapped, the willing, the passionate, the worldly, the listless--all find something unique to them in the sea. In The Awakening, the sea acts as Edna's conscience. She doesn't realize the correlation directly, but her freedoms give her liberty in the sea, and her darkest days are stormy. Eventually, the sea ends her conscience forever. What was born there must die there, so it makes sense that the awakening that she generated in that ocean would reclaim it. This is similar to the ocean in The Old Man and the Sea, where the sea gives Santiago the greatest fish of his life, and good weather, but reclaims the fish to feed its own creatures. This would make the sea appear selfish, but in reality, it is indeed a giving being. It gives when a human is in need, whether it needs encouragement or a Marlin. The sea simply has too many things to look over, however, and cannot give wantonly. It has to keep tabs on who has taken what, and must get them back. Keeping that under consideration, the sea does not treat Edna and Santiago equally. It upends Edna's life completely. It changes her, lets her see things she had never seen. It wakes her up and lets her see what life should be--but then takes away everything. For Santiago, the sea has always been a constant companion. It gives him fish and wearies his body and soul in return. But this fish is different. It is the greatest achievement he could have dreamed of, if he can only battle the pain. And he does. But the sea's loss is not equal to Santiago's, so she takes it back. In The Sea-Limits, the sea is not something man can associate with life, but rather life itself. As the marker of the passing of time, the sea is a super-being. It is beyond human understanding, and the only way we can see it is through that lens of the extraordinary. It is not just a companion but a guide, even a guardian.

The sea has long been an important part of literature. Its vastness and mystery are unmatched by any other aspect of nature. The sea cannot be contained, manipulated or moved without significant consequences. It's giving and kind, but ultimately just and fair, a protector of its creatures, and oblivious to petty human issues. How each individual approaches the sea is reciprocated. One's relationship with the sea is determined by one's own fears and expectations. Time has been kept as long as the sea has beaten upon the shore, and man has always sought to understand it, often only to find that what they were looking for was inside of themselves already.

just and fair, a protector of its creatures.

The Sea-Limits (Literary Work Three)

The Sea Limits - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Consider the sea's listless chime:
Time's self it is, made audible-
The murmur of the earth's own shell.
Secret Continuance sublime
Is the sea's end: our sigh may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's -- it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands
Gray and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmers of thronged men,
Surge and sink back and surge again-
Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strewn beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at hear
Not any thing but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

In The Sea Limits by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the sea is abstract. It is a lens used to view the passing of time, and existence. Called the “murmur of the earth’s own shell”, it is seen that the sound of the sea—the pounding of waves perhaps, is time “made audible.” Such a divine idea, that the ocean has always told the passing of time, that there has been no time unmarked by the crash of a wave, must come from a speaker with time on his hands to philosophize, in the least. Also, most likely, someone who is thoughtful, romantic and listless. Tackling eternity is a journey that takes flexibility and comfort with the self.

The speaker is focused on the sound of the sea as a central figure, and relates everything back to it. He even recognizes that silence, or the lack of the sea, is death. As he states, when the “painful pulse” stops, the sound of the waves, and life, is lost. The sea is the sound of life, the way Christ is the rock of faith. You can’t have life without clinging to that sound, the way Christians must cling to their foundation. The speaker is using the sea, or rather the sound of it, as a foundation for life. The woods also have the same eternal sound, according to the speaker. The sea and the woods will have “one voice” of “twin solitude.” The speaker may want the reader to appreciate that despite the murmurs of the “thronged men” that “surge and sink back and surge again,” the voice of the woods and the sea remain. Or rather: despite humans that invade nature on land and in the sea, the sea and the earth will always remain, retaliate, if not simply survive the damage inflicted upon it by civilization. Nature is eternal, unceasing and as old as time, and no inconsiderate population of humans can destroy it, anymore than they can stop time from passing.

That being said, if man “listens at [the] lips” of nature, he can understand it, and understand the “same desire and mystery.” This is just to say that if mankind could respect nature, then “Earth, Sea, Man, [would be] all in each.” If we understand the sea, or nature in general, we can understand each other, and our connection to the greater world, even our place in the universe. This interpretation of life through the sea helps the reader grasp what the reader is trying to say about time, the way it is eternal and unfathomable, the way counting the breaking of waves is impossible. It is also important to know that mankind is not meant to do such things, and should remain at peace with the environment and make every wave count. We don’t have forever, after all. Someday we will all hear only silence.

The Old Man and the Sea (Literary Work Two)

Earnest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" doesn't impose the sea as the protagonist's conscience as "The Awakening" did. Instead, the sea is more like a life partner to the Old Man, Santiago. They spend each day together, care for each other, argue, love and protect one another, but most of all offer the other respect. The Old Man is beset by hard times, having gone 84 days without taking a fish, and has consequently lost his fishing partner, a young man who loves him and has cared for him ever since Santiago taught him to fish when he was a boy. Santiago's journey begins at dawn one day, when he rows out in search of the fish he knows he will find. As he rows in the silence, he reflects on "la mar", how those who love the sea call her. They might say bad things about her, but always "as though she were a woman" (29). The young, disrespectful fishermen sometimes call her "el Mar", a masculine degradation. They treat her only as a "contestant or a place or even an enemy" (30). This is distressing to the protective Old man, who treats the sea as a lover, despite her poor treatment of him recently. He knows that when the sea does "wild or wicked things, it is because she could not help them" (30). This sums up Santiago's view on most of nature. It is untamable, unpredictable, and to be respected and loved at all times.
As Santiago catches his great fish (a leviathan, 18-foot Marlin), he embarks on a three day journey that drains him of all strength, and tests his resolve to the utmost degree. The sea remains his constant companion as the fish tows him further and further from home. His fishing expertise makes him so at home with the water, he can read things in it like a book. The weather, his location, the nearby fish, plankton and sea creatures--everything that is a part of the Sea is a part of the Old Man. He describes the turtles of the sea, and how so many people are heartless about them, because a turtle's heart will "beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered' (37). But the Old man knows that his heart is just like theirs, and his hands and feet are just like theirs, and he, too, depends on the sea for life, and isn't so foolish as the other people. These small revelations of Santiago continually show his life-earned wisdom and patience, and the impressive respect he garners for all things, especially the Marlin he follows. He often calls the fish "brother", and wishes the fish as much luck in killing him as he has to kill it. The life or death struggle must be lost by one of them, and the Old Man would be honored to have it go either way.
The great respect for nature, epitomized by his respect for the sea, is Santiago's greatest strength and weakness, together. The sea gives him challenges and rewards in the Marlin, but also traps him. When Santiago finally catches the Marlin, he is still a long way from home, and the creature is too big to bring into his boat. As Santiago tries to bring it home, he is attacked, over and over, by sharks, the hungry scavengers of the sea. The Old Man is exhausted and upset. He knew it was "too good to be true" to catch the Marlin, but had hoped to bring some of it home. But like a woman, the sea takes back what it has given. The Old Man barely makes it back home alive, as the sea gives him a gift, a Trade Wind, to drift home alive. "The wind is our friend...the great sea with our friends and our enemies" (120). Santiago cannot control what the sea throws at him, friend or foe, but he can do his best with whatever it is.
The greatest lesson the Old Man learns from the sea is that of nature's intentions. If he was meant to have the fish, he would have the fish. If he were meant to find another, he would. He is humble, but proud of his fishing skills, and willing to take what la mar will offer him. He knows that "no man was ever alone on the sea" (61). The sea is used to show Santiago's trust in nature, his infinite patience and quiet wisdom. The sea is indeed his friend, but brings him hardship as well. Santiago could never live without the sea, because while it frustrates him, and dangles hope in front of him, it is all he knows, and it sustains him, because he was born to be a fisherman, and a "fisherman must fish".

The Awakening (Literary Work One)

In Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," the sea represents the conscience of the protagonist, Edna Pontellier. Edna is Chopin's attempt to portray the ideal woman, one who doesn't have to give herself over to the single-mindedness of simply raising her children and pampering her husband. Edna slowly realizes her own abilities and power, and struggles to free herself from the constraints of such an oppressive society. Chopin uses the sea to reflect Edna's inner turmoil and rebellion. Chopin's novel was rejected at the time, but is now a tribute to radical thinking and feminist progress.
Edna's journey is notable because it is not tragic or horrific, nor does it occur in extreme circumstances. She's just a discontent woman, who has previously been unable to admit her unhappiness. "Happily" married with three children, Edna should be enjoying her summer holiday. But when her husband returns home late one night, doting and over-attentive, the confused Edna is driven to lonely tears. She doesn't know why her discontent is making her so frustrated, but she hears the sea calling as a "mournful lullaby upon the night" (11). Edna's inexplicable depression is only slightly eased by the presence of Robert, the fun-loving, flirtatious twenty-something who spends all of his free time following Edna around the island. On their daily walks to the beach, a "soft and warm" breeze springs up (24) as they approach the sea. The clear alleviation of stress in Robert's presence is what leads Edna to her self discovery, when she slowly begins to "realize her position in the universe as a human being" (25). This was radical in Chopin's time, that a woman would think of herself as an individual, outside of her societal roles. The longer Edna entreats herself with Robert's presence, the more she finds the sea to be "seductive" and "sensual", its voice "never-ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring" (26). As she embraces her womanhood and her connection with Robert, she sees herself, and also the sea, in a new way.
Edna's true revelation happens one night after a dinner party. As Edna recounts, until this point in the summer, she had been unable to swim. After lessons from nearly every person present, she still felt an "ungovernable dread" when she was in the water, always fearful unless she had the reassurance of "a hand nearby that might reach out and reassure her" (52). If we attribute this to Edna's mental state, we can know that Edna has always been afraid of being alone, and of the truth. She hasn't wanted to know the unknown, she hasn't had the desire to venture out alone. Her fear in the water was debilitating, but since she had her husband and children, and her seemingly perfect life, she didn't need swimming-- she didn't need knowledge. After her experience with Robert and in the process of finding herself, Edna wants to cast of her ignorance, her innocence, and find a way to swim. She does, and the feeling she gets is of "exultation." She wants to swim where "no woman had swum before" (53), to completely let go. Little does Edna know that that is exactly the path she is embarking upon, taking up a mantle that few women of the time had the courage to take, to make decisions based on her own desires and no others. But at this time, Edna is not prepared to leave the life she knows completely. Looking back to the shore, she feels the dreaded fear, and it "appall[s] and enfeeble[s] her senses" (54). On this evening of epiphany, Edna makes her first act of truly free will.
As Edna revels in her new-found freedom, she notes that the air is "pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire" (57). Until now, Robert's presence was comforting and liberating, but with her new ideals, she allows herself to see Robert in the light he has always been standing in. She begins to truly love Robert here, although she doesn't admit it until much later. Also for the first time that night, she openly defies her husband's wishes. She refuses to go to bed simply because he wants her to. She stays on the porch all night, and he, dumbfounded, accompanies her in silence and confusion. Edna's journey truly begins her. Her liberation in the sea signifies her liberation of consciousness. She begins a year of protest, self-fulfillment and discovery. She stops hosting her husbands visitors on tuesdays, because she doesn't want to. She starts visiting friends from the island, painting to make a living, and going to the races. Mr. Pontellier goes away, and the children go on holiday as well. In this time, Edna entertains male callers, buys a small house of her own, and secretly yearns for Robert. She cuts off all of her old loyalties to her husband, who follows her tracks, covering them to make sure the family appearance is upheld, never, however, suspecting adultery. Curiously, when Edna does succumb to her natural desires, she feels the guilt of betrayal, not to her husband, but to Robert, who has run off to Mexico.
Edna's freedoms hold throughout the year, until one day, Robert returns to town. She is almost wild in her desire to see him, but fearful of his response. When they finally make their vows of undying love for one another, Edna's free spirit seems unquenchable, and she is prepared to find a way to get out of her marriage and be with Robert. She explains that if Mr. Pontellier thought he had some sort of claim on her, she would laugh at him. This is, assumably, somewhat confusing to Robert, since women of the time were in marriage for life. Their love dies as quickly as it flourishes, since Robert disappears, leaving the note "I love you. Good by--because i love you." (215). Robert was unable to accept Edna's freedom the way she had. Edna's heartbreak is devastating, and she returns to the island for a final swim. She still describes the sea as seductive, never-ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, etc. She casts of her clothing, standing naked in the open air, "like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known" (220). The foam she describes as "serpents", the water as "chill", but, she reminds herself, sensuous. She feels it has "no beginning and no end" (221). She swims on and on, pushing her conscience off of herself until she is left with nothing. Her despair is unending, like the waves of the sea. She fittingly ends her life in the sea which had given her life in the first place. The sea is Edna's beginning and end, her joy and misery, her self and her environment.

The Sea

It's something I know I've always taken for granted. Well, maybe not for granted, but i don't appreciate it the way i should. In Gloucester, it's a part of life. From making a living on the water to dangling our feet off the boulevard, we're all touched in some way by the sea. The ocean has always been there, enticing, mysterious and comforting. Throughout time, it's had a magical quality. It's the great, roiling unknown. It kept mankind confined to the shore for hundreds of years, until it became the greatest adventure one could embark upon. Once we conquered crossing the sea, we realized we still didn't know what lay in the secret depths of the body that takes up most of the space on our planet. Fear, romance, camaraderie, heroics, adventure--all the parts that make up a good nautical story. But why choose the ocean? It can't support life. Humans can't live in the sea. They can't control it, they can't shape it to meet their needs like they can with land and resources. It's pretty much an all-around bad place to be for such feeble folk. But for some reason, we can't stay away.

So if the sea is so powerful, where does that leave us? Are we just mindless creatures drawn to the pounding waves, the way insects are drawn to shining lights? It's so inviting, we ignore the danger. We can't help ourselves. But when we get there, things aren't so simple, because we aren't mindless. The sea draws different people for different reasons. Some seek confrontation, others seek healing, but we all somehow find a way to see what we want in that great expanse of water.

But perhaps it would be more astute to investigate what the sea wants with us. If we considered the sea as a character, or even just as a foil, used to show us what we should find in ourselves, we might begin to understand it. This is what I will investigate through several literary works. My mission is to discover how authors use the sea to help characters understand themselves, and for readers to understand the characters. And perhaps, along the way, I'll learn more about what the sea means for me as well.