Meaning & Analysis
What one phase of the sea deposits, the opposite phase removes; the ocean’s alternating motions undo or reverse each other’s work.
Insights
Impermanence of fortune
Gains and losses are provisional; today’s windfall or setback is likely to be reversed by the next turn of events.
Self-correcting cycles
Systems often balance themselves over time; excesses or disturbances are later countered by opposing forces that restore equilibrium.
Counsel of patience
Trouble that ‘comes in’ may be carried off by time; the proverb urges endurance rather than rash response in the face of temporary conditions.
Limits of control
Human schemes cannot fix outcomes permanently; larger rhythms—economic, political, emotional—wash over individual intentions.
Moral reversion
Unjust gains or harms tend to be redressed; what opportunism brings in, ensuing tides of conscience, law, or custom may take away.
Complementary opposites
Variant phrasings (“The Ebb will fetch off, what the Tide brings in,” 1732) highlight a yin–yang logic: each phase undoes the other, teaching a cyclical, not linear, view of change.
Early modern worldview
Wolsey’s line—“This weltring world both flowes and ebs like seas” (1587)—captures a period sense that public life and private fortune are tidal, legitimating prudence and moderation amid volatility.
Cross-cultural echoes
From Fortuna’s wheel to Ecclesiastes’ seasons and Heraclitean flux, the proverb aligns with a wide tradition that treats reversal as a structural feature of reality, not a surprise.
Psychology of coping
By framing reversals as natural, the saying reduces catastrophic thinking and supports emotion regulation: today’s ‘debris’ is tomorrow’s ‘clear shore.’
Social and legal satire
The Newgate–Tyburn jest (cf. ‘low ebb’ to ‘afloat’) wryly maps tides onto criminal fortunes, implying how swiftly public status can swing from peril to display—and back again.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
Sets ‘tide’ against ‘ebb’ to crystallize reversal, making the lesson memorable through stark opposition.
Personification
The sea ‘fetches away’ like a deliberate agent, lending inevitability and moral weight to the cycle.
Parallelism
Balanced clauses (“will fetch away / what the ebb brings”) frame action and counteraction with rhythmic symmetry.
Metonymy
‘Tide’ and ‘ebb’ stand for broader historical, social, or emotional currents, extending the proverb’s range beyond maritime fact.
Gnomic present
States a timeless rule rather than a one-off event, giving the line aphoristic authority.
Transcription
Quotations
This weltring world both flowes and ebs like seas.
(brings in)
The Ebb will fetch off, what the Tide brings in.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.