Symbol Analysis
You won't find a more present image in the poem than the sea; it's a graveyard, a menace, a thing to mourn, and the origin of man. Whew. Whatever the role, the sea ultimately represents the destruction of human life by forces greater than we can overpower.
- Line 2: Our first image of the sea is rough, as it is "breaking violently" in the night. Yikes. It's during this storm that the body of the drowned sailor is revealed. Lowell means for us to equate this death with the sea's power.
- Lines 46-47: The water is described as "harrowed" and "fruitless." In this section, the sea is only a place for death; it never creates life, only takes it.
- Line 71: Now the waters are "troubled," which again spells disaster for our sailors.
- Lines 79-80: As the high tide "mutters to its hurt self," the tide goes out, revealing the land. Lowell is personifying the sea, imagining that the low tide causes it pain, which in turn mirrors the pain of grief.
- Lines 132-140: Here Lowell addresses the Atlantic outright, claiming it is better for all the "blue sailors" that "foul" its waters. The sea breaks everything apart, both man and beast, after trapping them like "spoil." Lowell does give us a final image of God creating life from the slime of the sea; here, the sea isn't death, but the origin of life.