London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
 1820 'Letter to Maria Gisborne', l.193-5.
Canada may be fast-forwarding, jump starting, into a new pattern, a model of communication linkages, a civilization that is more than a grab for power and dominance, a place that could channel the fires of the global wirings, where political alliances are subject to electrical ebb and flow, and the alchemical cultivations of imagination and perception, of the self, could precail of the ideology of capital.
Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
The sun was down, And all the west was paved with sullen fire. I cried, "Behold! the barren beach of hell At ebb of tide."
 A Life Drama, scene 4.
 John Keble, Christian Year. First Sunday after Christmas.
Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love .
Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance...to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony , between its tides and the life of man...The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.
Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears! Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore, Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable sea?
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Time.