“Time” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe

Are brackish with the salt of human tears!

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow

Claspest the limits of mortality!

 

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,

Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;

Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,

Who shall put forth on thee,

Unfathomable Sea?

 

 

 

Despite making up a vast majority of the world, much about oceans is still unknown for mankind. The mystery draws many poets and artists in by depicting their own mythologies and stories surrounding the sea, Percy Bysshe Shelley being no exception. His poem, “Time”, describes the motion of the sea. Through the use of personification, the author makes a villainous figure of the body of water, casting it in a cruel light with little regard of what it swallows. Coupled with metaphors of the sea to time, the poem paints an enigmatic and eternal entity whose intentions are, and remain, unknowable. 

 

Considering the subject of the poem, the “Unfathomable Sea”, there is a rather strange mismatch with the title “Time”. The relation between the two, however, is established with the very first line, where waves are likened to years. The waves do not literally come in years, but they do embody the millions of years the ocean has accumulated. This suggests the eternal presence of the sea, having survived and dominated Earth and far surpassing any other lifeform. The name given in the next line, an Ocean of Time, is rather fitting in that sense, and the waters of deep misery and woes can then be linked to both the ocean and to time itself. The third line speaks of the waters being brackish, a word which refers to how salty the water is. Here, Shelley suggests that perhaps the reason for its saline condition is from the accretion of millennials of human woes referenced in the last line. 

 

The metaphor to time and the ocean’s longevity is explicitly referenced for the last time in the fourth line, which describes a shoreless flood where the ebb and flow of the waves have no true beginning nor end. The reader’s attention can also be drawn to the bold declaration of the last line in the first stanza, ending with an exclamation point, emphasizing the contrast between the immortality of the ocean and the mortality of which it attacks at. This also serves as a transitory line. Up until now, the rhyming scheme had been ABAB-, but the second stanza uses the AABB- format, which follows the shift in focus of the poem. Rather than pondering the boundless state of the ocean, the second stanza shifts towards diving deeper into the oceans’ mysteries and its more insidious nature. The tone also transitions from being in awe of its age to a more critical analysis of the violence it brings forth. 

 

 

The second half of the poem characterizes the ocean through personifications. The first two lines describe its human tendency towards greed, regurgitating prey yet still “howling on for more” (6), similar to an unsatisfied child who has trouble recognizing their own hunger. Despite many mythologies and legends alluding to the dual personality of the sea and its patron god, pleasant one minute and wrathful the next, Shelley instead describes the Ocean of Time “Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm” (8). Much like a child in the midst of a temper tantrum, there is no break in its aggressiveness. 

 

In the last two lines, Shelley poses a rhetorical question addressing the ocean, questioning what can possibly stand up to the constant onslaught of waves. In parallel to the first words of the poem, it ends with “Unfathomable Sea”, bringing back its aspect of unknowableness in the mind of the reader. With its everlasting presence, it is only natural to think of the accumulated hardships and mysteries that this Ocean of Time embodies. Although Shelley attempts to unravel the mysteries line by line, the poem still culminates in a question mark (“Unfathomable Sea?”), contrasting the confident punctuation following the first phrase (“Unfathomable Sea!”).

 

 

Through the metaphors to time, both it and the sea being eternal from where mankind stands, and personifications to a particularly greedy and immature human, there is an odd juxtaposition with the mature body of the ocean and the more childish mindset it possesses. On the other hand, as Shelley indicates, perhaps it is only fitting for such a long-living presence to be made up of such contradictions. Underneath the scrutiny of the Ocean of Time, the poem is a demonstration of trying to interpret what has been, so far, inconclusive. Paradoxical and almost irrational, there is some danger in thinking too much on what is not meant to know, for its vastness exceeds established knowledge.