Who lay against the sea, and fled,
Who lightly loved the wave,
Shall never know, when he is dead,
A cool and murmurous grave.

But in a shallow pit shall rest
For all eternity,
And bear the earth upon the breas
That once had worn the sea.

Analysis, meaning and summary of Dorothy Parker's poem The Sea

3 Comments

  1. Student 11 says:

    This girl must be crazy, her husband was a bi sexual and she couldn’t tell! She needed some help!

  2. Ben says:

    I think that this poem is truly magnificent.. i love dorthy parker..she is one of my favorite poets of at times!

  3. Morteza Lak says:

    “The Sea” like many other poems of Parker has the theme of death as an inevitable reality that reveals its facets in man’s life frequently.In “The Sea” Parker admits unpredictability of death plus its certainty.The metaphor “shallow pit” illustrates the grave as a place for the long wait for the doomsday.
    the poem is symbolically noticeable. Sea, as the symbol of unconsciousness and the mystery of life, represents the splendour or at least the certainty of death. The heaviness of the sea may imply the burden of the deeds we have done in the world. Anyway, Parker does not complains of death, but she has accepted it as a phenomenon. Parker’s determinism magnifies her sight to the world, death and results in her sentimental purification. Probably, Parker advises us to find a source of symbolic water or sea for purification before death, because the posthumous life is appraised according to our earthly existence.

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