tide

Strong is the lionölike a coal His eye-ballölike a bastion's mole His chest against the foes: Strong, the gier-eagle on his sail, Strong against tide, th'enormous whale Emerges as he goes.

—Smart, Christopher

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. SeeAchebe 2:18.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

   One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washe'  d it away; Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. 'Vain man,'said she,'that doest in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalise, For I my self shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wipe'  d out likewise.' 'Not so,'quod I,'let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Where when as death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.'

—Spenser, Edmund

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.

—Masefield,John Edward

There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hide, There hang his head, and view the lazy tide In its hot slimy channel slowly glide; Where the small eels that left the deeper way For the warm shore, within the shallows play; Where gaping mussels, left upon the mud, Slope their slow passage to the fallen flood.

—Crabbe, George

There was a fine gentle wind, and Mr Pickwick's hat rolled sportively before it. The wind puffed, and Mr Pickwick puffed, and the hat rolled over and over as merrilyas a lively porpoise in a strong tide.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

We write in sand, our language grows, And like our tide ours overflows.

—Waller, Edmund

Forgive the hero, you who would have died Gladly with all you knew; he rode that tide To Ararat; all men are Noah's sons.

—Wilbur, Richard

When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side, What stalked through the Post Office? What intellect, What calculation, number, measurement, replied? We Irish, born into that ancient sect But thrown upon this filthy modern tide And by its formless spawning fury wrecked, Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

Pray for the grace of accuracy Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination stealing like the tide across a map to his girl solid with yearning.

—Lowell, RobertTraill Spence,Jr

Rose of all Roses,Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God's bell buoyed to be the water's care.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

O Oisin, mount by me and ride To shores by the wash of the tremulous tide, Where men have heaped no burial-mounds, And the days pass by like a wayward tune.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.

—Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty†likea dryshell onthebeach, waiting for thetide to come in again.

—du Maurier, Dame Daphne

Cast yourbread uponthewaters,but wait until thetideis coming in to do it.

—Haggai,Thomas

Ah, to be able to recognise when the tide isgoing out, when to get off the beach.

—Wogan,Terry

'People can't die, along the coast,'said Mr Peggotty, 'except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh inönot properly born, till flood. He's a going out with the tide.'

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

'Why weep ye by the tide, ladie? Why weep ye by the tide? I'll wed ye to my youngest son, And ye sall be his bride: And ye sall be his bride, ladie, Sae comely to be seen'ö But aye she loot the tears down fa' For Jock of Hazeldean.

—Scott, Sir Walter