Sara Teasdale imagines a small, sheltered pool speaking in the first person. The pool knows its peaceful world intimately: the sky overhead, the stars, the moon, and the wind that ruffles its surface. Yet every time the wind passes, it carries something from beyond the marsh-grass wall — the distant sound of the sea. That sound haunts the pool. At first it seems beautiful, but by night it becomes terrible, waking the pool from sleep. There’s a quiet but powerful restlessness here: the feeling of being safe and contained, yet yearning toward something vast, unknown, and a little frightening. The sea represents what lies beyond the familiar, and the wind acts as a restless messenger, reminding the pool — and perhaps the reader — that a larger world is always calling, even when we are tucked away in comfort.
The Sea Wind — Summary
I AM a pool in a peaceful place, I greet the great sky face to face, I know the stars and the stately moon And the wind that runs with rippling shoon-- But why does it always bring to me The far-off, beautiful sound of the sea?
The marsh-grass weaves me a wall of green, But the wind comes whispering in between, In the dead of night when the sky is deep The wind comes waking me out of sleep-- Why does it always bring to me The far-off, terrible call of the sea?