A Summer Day by the Sea
A Summer Day by the Sea - meaning Summary
Evening Remembers Summer's Duality
Longfellow's brief lyric observes a sea-side sunset that evokes both beauty and melancholy. The poem frames evening light and lighthouses as a gentle transition from day to night, while addressing summer's contradictory effects: it can memorialize past joys as a "gravestone of a dead delight" or mark the start of fresh possibilities. The lines present memory and change as intertwined, suggesting how a single scene can hold loss and hope simultaneously.
Read Complete AnalysesThe sun is set; and in his latest beams Yon little cloud of ashen gray and gold, Slowly upon the amber air unrolled, The falling mantle of the Prophet seems. From the dim headlands many a light-house gleams, The street-lamps of the ocean; and behold, O'erhead the banners of the night unfold; The day hath passed into the land of dreams. O summer day beside the joyous sea! O summer day so wonderful and white, So full of gladness and so full of pain! Forever and forever shalt thou be To some the gravestone of a dead delight, To some the landmark of a new domain.
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