Stanza 2 Summary

Lines 6-7

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;

• The speaker continues to talk about twilight. Darkness is descending and the sea is… calling. Okay, the sea doesn't actually call like, say, this parrot does, so this is an example of personification. 
• The sea's calling could mean a few different things. The speaker could just be describing the sounds of the tide rising and falling, like this. 
• The speaker could also be speaking more figuratively, and saying something like, "listen, the ocean is calling you home."
• We've got a traveler heading back to town, so there's definitely a "the bell is tolling and it's time to go home" vibe going on. 
• Meanwhile, we've got to ask, what's up with that repetition of the word "sea"? We know this poem has a lot to do with the ocean. It has the word "tide" in the title after all.
• The way the speaker keeps saying "the sea, the sea," though makes us feel as though he is talking directly to us, or thinking out loud (perhaps in front of a… fireplace). It gives the poem a more informal quality, almost if we're listening to a guy thinking out loud rather than, say, penning a sonnet. 
• We will have more to say about this tonal quality of the poem over at "Sound Check," so for now let's keep moving and see what else our speaker has to say.

Lines 8-10

The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises the tide falls.

• Woah, things start to get really poetic now.
• The ocean waves are erasing ("effac[ing]") all the footprints that have been left (by the traveler?) in the sand.
• Let's start with those "soft, white hands." We're dealing with personification again, folks, as the sea doesn't really have soft white hands. This is the speaker's way of saying the sea is gentle, kind, and, well, soft—almost like a loving mother.
• Now, about those footprints: there's a good chance they belong to the traveler, who you recall was on his way back to town the last time we saw him. 
• So, the traveler has left the shore, and is heading back to town, and in the meantime the soft, gentle ocean has "effaced" (i.e., washed away) his footprints. Hey, at least the ocean is nice and gentle about it.
• We've talked about twilight and the falling of the tide as metaphors for death, and the effacement of the footprints here continues that whole line of thinking. The traveler has left the shore, and now all of the evidence that he was ever there is completely gone.
• It's pretty clear now that the speaker is talking about death: the footprints are a metaphor for, and evidence of, life. The tide wiping them away takes away that sign of life, and so is a metaphor for death. It's almost like every single trace of the traveler's existence is completely eradicated. Sad times, gang.
• And yet, life simply goes on. How can we not think that when the speaker concludes the second stanza by saying just that: "And the tide rises the tide falls"?
• But just a second here, the tides don't just disappear do they? They rise, they fall, and then… well, they rise again. Even though the speaker is trying to make a point about death, his metaphor points out that there is life—in some way, shape, or form—after death, that the tides will rise again.
• We're gonna bet that he says something about this in the poem's final stanza. Let's read on...