Life and living, death and dying; Mortal tides which ebb and flow, Begin and end when tide is lowest, Whether flood be high or low.
So in rising and in falling, Measure not how high they reach, But instead, upon their ebbing, What they leave upon the beach.
"Beachcomber" uses the sea as a picture of a human life. The tide rises and falls, and so do our lives, with their beginnings and endings, their good stretches and bad. The first stanza makes the point that every cycle starts and ends at the lowest point of the tide, no matter how high the water climbed in between.
The second stanza turns this into advice. Don't judge a life by how high it reached, the speaker says. Look at what it leaves on the beach once the water pulls back. The title now makes sense: a beachcomber walks the shoreline after the tide, sifting through what remains. Here, that means a person's lasting worth lies in what they leave for others, not in their peaks or their status.
The mood is calm and reflective, with a quiet, gentle wisdom. Death is treated as a natural part of the rhythm, not something to fear, and the ending feels more hopeful than sad.