Naked Shingles of the World

The theme of this poem basically says that people can only have trust and faith in God, who is love, because earthly things are deceiving.

The speaker starts off by saying that "the sea is calm tonight". When I think of a calm sea, I am automatically relaxed (or really annoyed because we live in Indiana). But I think they even make machines that make the noise of the ocean hitting against the rocks to relax people who are trying to sleep.

But the speaker claims that these sounds are the sounds of human misery? He obviously isn't really talking about the waves. They probably stand for like heretics or bad people.

People who tempt us (or, you know, the devil) try to disguise themselves as really approachable, nice people. Like the old man in the white van with candy.

So the sea is the world-it disguises itself as something beautiful and enticing so that it can shake our faith in God.