Romantic Images of the Sea in Poetry

Metaphor of the Sea in Keats' and Longfellow's Poetry

One of the most potent metaphors in literature is that of the ocean. The ocean has a timeless, rhythmic quality that has inspired authors of all genres, nations, and eras. For the early 19th century Romantic poet John Keats, observing the sea motivated him to reflect upon pagan mythology and the moon's inconstant temperament. In his poem simply titled "On the Sea," Keats writes that sometimes the sea "with its mighty swell / Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell / Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound." Keats notes how the sea can sometimes be harsh and threatening while other times be mild and even tender. Although it may fill some caverns up with its threatening presence, at other times "tis in such gentle temper found / that scarcely will the very smallest shell / Be moved for days from where it sometime fell."

While Keats does mention "the winds of heaven" in one line, he primarily invokes Hecate, the pagan goddess of witches and the moon to explain the sea's personality and meanderings versus Christian images. The sea is a reminder of the wildness of nature and the purer and unspoiled quality of ancient civilization. The poem ends with Keats urging the reader who is tired and fed up with the "cloying melody" of the modern world to "Sit ye near some old Cavern's Mouth and brood, / Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!" The natural world may be terrifying, but it is necessary to embrace it to truly feel alive.

"The Sound of the Sea" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was written in 1920, more than a hundred years after Keats' 1817 poem. For Longfellow as well, the sea is an irresistible force, although Longfellow engages in more direct personification of the sea, versus invoking age-old goddesses or nymphs. The first line of the poem reads how "The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep," as if the sea were a human being. Longfellow's poem lacks the use of frequent classical allusions unlike Keats' work. As the title suggests, Longfellow focuses more on the immediate sounds of the sea rather than the visual behaviors of the sea in its imagery. The sea is said to speak with: "A voice out of the silence of the deep" and its echoes are "mysteriously multiplied / As of a cataract from the mountain's side, / Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep." Longfellow places far greater emphasis on how the sea affects the interior life of the poet, versus Keats who focuses more on telling his readers how to experience the sea to take them out of the limits of their mundane lives. Longfellow muses how just like the roar of the sea arises: "So comes to us at times, from the unknown / And inaccessible solitudes of being, / The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul."

For both authors, the sea is a constant and ever-changing being that reflects something important about the human condition. For Keats, it is a sense of connection with pagan antiquity and the ever-changing nature of the natural world that is in stark contrast with modernity. For Longfellow, the sea's roars which comes forth now and then are like the ideas which arise in the gazer's mind: " ... inspirations, that we deem our own ... things beyond our reason or control." In Longfellow's estimation the sea is the perfect example of wildness and the inconstant nature of both human and natural life although he links its behaviors, specifically its voice, more directly to poetic inspiration that lies beyond reason than Keats.