Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Poems
“The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”
Footsteps on the sands of time” is a common expression referring to the passage of time. In the second stanza a similar image appears. What does this image suggest has happened to the traveler?
Darkness settles on roofs and walls, But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; The little waves, with their soft, white hands, Efface the footprints in the sands, And the tide rises, the tide falls.