Told in the first person, the poem begins as a quiet, almost dreamlike night scene. Fog drifts away, waves seem to call, and moonlight pushes through the clouds. The speaker's heartbeat falls into rhythm with the water and wind, and stepping into the sea feels like joining a piece of music. The splash of salt water is a welcome, and the speaker says plainly that the ocean is home.
Then the mood shifts. The speaker admits the sea "keeps its secrets well," suggesting there is far more beneath the surface than anyone understands. The final lines turn serious. People plunder the ocean's depths and destroy its life, yet it keeps fighting, and it remains in grave danger. What starts as wonder and belonging ends as worry and protectiveness. The ellipses slow the poem down, like waves rolling in, and make the opening feel calm and hypnotic. That calm gives the warning at the end more weight: the thing the speaker loves most is under threat.