Recovering from illness can feel like fighting the ocean, and that is the central comparison here. A swimmer is caught in dragging waves and tangled seaweed. He manages to stand for a moment, pale and still against the blue water, only to slip on shells and fall into the jeering surf, grasping for help that is not there. Still, he keeps moving, inch by inch, toward a bright shore where poppies bloom and sandflies dance. The speaker watches with a tense but tender feeling: exhaustion and setbacks are real, yet the poem ends in stubborn hope as the land breeze arrives and May sunlight breaks through.
Convalescence — Summary
From out the dragging vastness of the sea, Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands, He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands One moment, white and dripping, silently, Cut like a cameo in lazuli, Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands Prone in the jeering water, and his hands Clutch for support where no support can be. So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch, He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow And sandflies dance their little lives away. The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow, And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.