In the first stanza, the person narrating the poem is describing a lot of things with a lot a imagery. They highlight that the sea is particularly calm tonight, suggesting that it's not always calm. The rhythm of the ebb and flow of the ocean is also presented to us in this first part of the poem where it says "gleam and is gone" and "waves draw back and fling" and "begin, cease, and then again begin". This sense of coming and going can represent the constant repetition of time and history. This evokes a feeling in the narrator which shifts the tone of the poem entirely. Suddenly, the poem becomes very reflective and saddening. In the second stanza, the narrator turns to history and thinks about the fact that they are probably not the only person in history that has ever felt this way. They point out the fact that Sophocles heard that very same noise of the ebb and flow of the waves on the AEgean and probably felt the same way. This shows that human nature is inherent and that even eras apart, people can find connections. In the third stanza, we start to see that the narrator believes that the reason humans don't learn from their past mistakes is because not enough people are faithful anymore. For some, the answers to everything could be found in religion, the same way for students the answers for everything is found at school, in our book and with our teachers. Although I don't agree with the author in saying that the problem is that people weren't faithful enough, I do believe that even now people are not educated enough. Lastly in the final stanza, the narrator illustrates how little faith he has in the world and it's future. At the very end he says "swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night." This affected me deeply, because I see our current situation in the world in these lines. If ignorant armies and clashing and they don't really know what for, we are losing the plot. To be confused in alarms, as in there is so much commotion and destruction that it is hard to keep up.