The Sound of the Sea

The Sound of the Sea:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

This poem, The Sound of the Sea, stood out to me because of the use of personification and sound. These different types of imagery give the reader a specific description of the sea: its appearance, its sounds, and its behavior.

The use of personification makes the sea seem alive by giving it human characteristics. For example, "The sea awoke" makes it seem as if, for a period of time, the sea was calm and quiet. When it "awoke", it became louder and more forceful than it had been.

Sounds are an important part of the poem because they give the reader a better insight into what Longfellow was experiencing when he was looking at the sea. The title of the poem is the Sound of the Sea, so obviously, he felt that the poem should be focused on sound. Longfellow wrote, "a voice out of the silence", and "roar of winds". He shows the reader through these descriptions that the sound of the sea seemed to come out of nowhere and was loud and stark contrast to the calm that had preceded it. When you read the poem aloud, the rhythm of the words reflect the motion of waves as they hit the shore. Not only the words of the poem but also the way they sound create the sounds of the sea.