Ebb

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1921

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Heart as a Symbol of Love and Power

In “Ebb,” the heart symbolizes love, and the death of love adversely impacts the speaker's love, or, her heart. It’s as if the speaker’s ability to love depended on receiving love from her partner. Now that her partner’s love is gone, the speaker loses her capacity to love. Instead, she’s become “hollow” (Line 3), “little” (Lines 4 and 6), and dry. Her heart is not a terrain where love can grow. In “Ebb,” the heart represents the speaker’s state, which connects to love; without love, the speaker finds herself in a desolate, barren condition.

The heart can also symbolize an all-consuming force. The speaker doesn’t say, “I know what I’ve been like / Since your love died.” No, she states, “I know what my heart is like / Since your love died” (Lines 1-2). The speaker is talking about a specific part of her body. Yet this single part has a powerful impact on the rest of her, as if the speaker’s identity and heart are inseparable. What happens to her heart happens to her, therefore, the speaker’s diminished heart diminishes her entire being.

The Water as a Symbol for Love

In “Ebb,” the water, too, arguably symbolizes love. In the simile, the speaker’s heart retains some water. Since the love between the speaker and her partner “died” (Line 2), the speaker’s heart has ebbed to “a little pool” (Line 4). The miniature pool of water is all the speaker’s heart can hold. Indeed, the small amount of water symbolizes the speaker’s reduced capacity to receive or give love.

Things need water to grow, and, in the symbolic universe of “Ebb,” love needs water to grow. Thus, water symbolizes the speaker’s potential to create love. The tiny and “tepid” (Line 6) pool is an unfavorable condition. The minute amount of water that the speaker possesses is not sticking around or getting any bigger. Rather, the water is “Drying inward from the edge” (Line 7) or disappearing. If water represents love, the speaker’s lack of water signifies that she’s not in the right place to cultivate love.

The Internal versus the External

A motif or idea that hovers around “Ebb” involves the tension between the internal and the external. There’s a conflict between what’s inside the speaker and under her control and what's beyond the speaker or outside of her power and domain. The one thing that appears to belong to the speaker is her heart: “I know what my heart is like” (Line 1). “My” is a possessive determiner, which, as the term indicates, means that the speaker possesses her heart.

Love, however, doesn’t belong to the speaker. The two words “your love” (Line 2) indicate that someone else possesses the love—the “you” or the person this poem might be addressing. The "your" sets up conflict: The speaker's inner turmoil results from external difficulties with the person who has withdrawn their love from the speaker.

The speaker might possess her own heart, but it appears controlled by outside influences. The speaker presents the tepid, tiny condition of the heart as a result of an external process—the rising and falling of the tide. At the same time, the speaker doesn’t rule out that there's something within her that’s diminishing her capacity for love. “Drying inward from the edge” (Line 7) implies that an internal process is happening to the speaker to perpetuate her melancholy, inhospitable condition.