"beats against the stern dumb shore
The stormy passion of its mighty heart."

Sometimes the emphasis is on the subjective mood which that
activity arouses:

"Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea.
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me,"

Sometimes the two are indissolubly blended as in the song,
"Am Meer," so exquisitely set to music by Schubert--where the
rhythmic echoes of the heaving tide accompany the surging
emotions of a troubled heart.

The direct impression made by the objective phenomena of the
play of waves finds abundant expression in the whole range of
literature--not the least forcefully in Tennyson. How fine his
painting of the wave on the open sea.

"As a wild wave in the wide North-Sea
Green glimmering towards the summit, bears, with all
Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies,
Down on a bark, and overbears the bark,
And him that helms it."

How perfect also the description of a wave breaking on a level,
sandy beach: