Symbol Analysis
A bird calls, the sea calls, and a hostler calls. Three times folks we encounter the word "calls." In the first and second stanzas, we get the impression that the call is pretty much the equivalent of a death knell, the tolling of a bell announcing that the traveler will soon be dead. It's not until the end that an actual human does the calling (the hostler calls out in the poem's final stanza). The whole poem is about the traveler's impending death, and yet at the end the hostler calls. This is the speaker's way of saying life goes on—the hostler is still very much alive and kicking.
- Line 2: The curlew (a type of shore bird) calls as the day turns to darkness. The call is thus associated with death, and is practically a death knell.
- Line 7: Instead of the curlew, it is now the sea calling. The sea doesn't literally call, so this is a textbook example of personification. Like the curlew, the sea calls in the darkness, which suggests a connection between calling and death, as if the sea were also capable of ringing a death knell.
- Line 12: Okay, so now it is the hostler calling—a human being as opposed to the sea or the curlew. The clearly-alive hostler contrasts with the clearly-dead traveler, and in this stanza calling is associated with life as opposed to death. The fact that the word is associated with both life and death affirms the poem's idea that all of life is cyclical: life, death, life, death.