The Dry Salvages Summary

In the first part, the narrator expresses his belief that the river is a god. Though it was once seen as a frontier, it is forgotten after a bridge is built to conquer it. The river rages, reminding men what they choose to forget. It watches and waits. The river is within all men; the sea is around all men. The sea tosses earlier creation on the beach. The sea has many voices; it howls, yelps, and whines. The sea measures time by the unhurried ground swell, a method older than worried women calculating the future and piecing together the past with the future. Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception, time stops, never ending, and the bell clangs.

In the second part, the narrator wonders when the wreckage and calamitous annunciation will end. He realizes...