The Needle
The Needle - meaning Summary
Seize the Fleeting Tide
The poem addresses a beloved with urgent imperatives to act before a favorable moment is lost. Nautical and stellar imagery—tide, needle, pole—frames time as a shifting, navigable power that can either support or undo them. The speaker urges seizing a shared 'treasure' and making land while the current favors them, then waiting under a neutral force until the course changes. It emphasizes immediacy and prudent retreat.
Read Complete AnalysesCome, or the stellar tide will slip away. Eastward avoid the hour of its decline, Now! for the needle trembles in my soul! Here have we had the vantage, the good hour. Here we have had our day, your day and mine. Come now, before this power That bears us up, shall turn against the pole. Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be. O Love, come now, this land turns evil slowly. The waves bore in, soon will they bear away. The treasure is ours, make we fast land with it. Move we and take the tide, with its next favour, Abide Under some neutral force Until this course turneth aside.
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