Standing at the water's edge, the speaker gives itself a quiet instruction: stop counting ships and simply pay attention to the sea. The "list of ships" suggests a habit of cataloguing, of sorting the world into tidy records. The sea can't be handled that way, so the poem asks for a different kind of looking.
Then comes a strange, funny image: "an ape all alone," as "melancholy as the fall." The speaker seems to see themselves, or perhaps all humans, as a lonely animal staring at something far bigger than itself. The comparison to autumn adds a gentle sadness, a sense of things fading.
But the last lines turn. "However content / to change / and to be" lets the sadness sit beside acceptance. The mood is wistful but settled, even peaceful. Loneliness doesn't vanish, yet the speaker seems at ease with shifting and simply existing, much like the tide in front of them.