The poem to me is about how the sea is dangerous to people who do not know what it is capable of but to the experienced they know when to leave and when not to.... and how someone knows everything about something but nothing about another one thing in the poem is personification because the ocean is not a woman it is the ocean.
Sand Dunes
Sea waves are green and wet, But up from where they die, Rise others vaster yet, And those are brown and dry.
They are the sea made land To come at the fisher town, And bury in solid sand The men she could not drown.
She may know cove and cape, But she does not know mankind If by any change of shape, She hopes to cut off mind.
Men left her a ship to sink: They can leave her a hut as well; And be but more free to think For the one more cast-off shell.
Sand Dunes
Sea waves are green and wet,
But up from where they die,
Rise others vaster yet,
And those are brown and dry.
They are the sea made land
To come at the fisher town,
And bury in solid sand
The men she could not drown.
She may know cove and cape,
But she does not know mankind
If by any change of shape,
She hopes to cut off mind.
Men left her a ship to sink:
They can leave her a hut as well;
And be but more free to think
For the one more cast-off shell.