THE TIDE rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; Along the sea-sands damp and brown The traveller hastens toward the town, And the tide rises, the tide falls. Which statement best describes the theme of this stanza?
Answers
The poet is trying to compare life with nature. He compares life with the rising and falling tides. As humans, die (falling tides) and take birth (rising tide).
The “twilight darkens” indicates the human life coming to an end. Similarly, “curlew calls” means calling the death nearer. The poet here tried to portray the gloomy aspect of life by comparing it to the rise and fall of tides. According to the poet, traveler tries to reach his destination soon but one day everything merges into the darkness of death, thus sea-sands are damp and brown.
The poet emphasized on the dark part of the human life that is “death”.
Like the ebb and flow of tide, the human life has its own ups and downs. Man, hurries through life from birth until death, going through the good things and bad things, which happen one after the other.
Where is man hurrying to? Like the man mentioned in the poem, in real life, man is making his way through life, to old age and ultimately death. The curlew’s call symbolises the call of death.