In the Harbour: the City and the Sea
In the Harbour: the City and the Sea - meaning Summary
Sea's Ambiguous Mercy
Longfellow’s short lyric frames the city as exhausted and the sea as a powerful force whose cooling breath offers both relief and danger. The poem contrasts urban suffering with the ocean’s ambivalent intervention: restorative for some, fatal for others. It invokes mythic echoes to suggest that aid can be double-edged, and ends on a tense question about whether the sea’s mercy will ultimately spare or destroy the city’s inhabitants.
Read Complete AnalysesThe panting City cried to the Sea, 'I am faint with heat,--O breathe on me!' And the Sea said, 'Lo, I breathe! but my breath To some will be life, to others death!' As to Prometheus, bringing ease In pain, come the Oceanides, So to the City, hot with the flame Of the pitiless sun, the east wind came. It came from the heaving breast of the deep, Silent as dreams are, and sudden as sleep. Life-giving, death-giving, which will it be; O breath of the merciful, merciless Sea?
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