Darkness settles on roofs and walls, But the sea in the darkness calls and calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the
shore,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls" 1
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls, in The Poetical Works of Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887), 289.
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