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Longfellow’s poem has a grave and somber tone. This tone is already signaled in the poem’s title: “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls.” This title has a measured symmetry that articulates a simple yet profound truth about the nature of the world. On the one hand, the title specifically references the ceaseless ebb and flow of ocean tides as they rise and fall. Yet it’s also immediately evident that the rise and fall of oceanic tides should be understood symbolically—for example, as the periodic “rise” and “fall” of a person’s fortunes throughout their life. Such a comparison between the movement of the tides and the rhythm of a life is so common as to be a cliché. But cliché or not, Longfellow commits to this trope and invests it with a significant sense of gravitas. Part of the poem’s gravitas emerges from the starkly unequal relationship in the poem between the mysterious traveler and the wide seaside landscape that all but drowns the traveler out. The spareness of the references to the traveler somberly reflect the smallness of an individual human life when compared to the vastness of the natural world.

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