Question

explain "washed their terribly transient feet".

Answer 1

Transient means something which is temporary or short-lived. Here, when the author says terribly transient feet, she refers to the ever changing imprints of the feet left on the sea sand. The sea never appears to change but the human life is transient. It's never constant, it will see both ups and downs.

Now you may ask why would she say so?

If you read the poem further you'll know.

After about twenty or thirty years the poet’s mother would look at the photograph laughing nostalgically and remembering the past. She would appreciate the dress worn by her cousins Betty and Dolly. The sea holiday belonged to the past of her mother and the poet still remembers how her mother would laugh looking at the snap shot. For the poet both these bring great sadness and an acute sense of loss. Her mother died 12 years ago and now the poet has noting to say about this circumstance of the photograph.

Answer 2

Answer:

Washed their dreadfully fleeting feet. Transient refers to something transient or ephemeral. The author refers to the ever-changing footprints left on the sea sand when she writes that they are "terribly transitory feet" in this passage. Human existence is transitory, but the sea seems never to change.

Step-by-step explanation:

The poet is depicting human life.

Wash off their terrible transitory feet denotes something fleeting or momentary. The author is alluding to the ever-changing tracks left in the sea sand when she states in this passage, "awful vanishing feet." Life is ephemeral, yet the sea never seems to change. The term "foot" is used to describe a person in this statement. Transient denotes brevity. This expression conveys the idea that human life is only transitory. The water is everlasting, yet man must perish sooner or later. After we pass away, it will always be theirs. Since everything in the world is transient and always changing, the only thing that is constant and never stops occurring is change itself. This helps us to comprehend that everything in the world is ephemeral. The poet wants to illustrate that every kind of time, whether it was sad or whether it was happy, it shall pass, and it will keep on changing so we should value every moment of life and keep moving forward because life is full of surprises and has many different kinds of amazing days ahead and might be some bad days, but they will also teach you s, and they will be sad about what they don't have, and they are also sad about what happiness they had in earlier times but now they don't have it.