Please please please help me english and literature experts!?

Question:

Please please please help me english and literature experts!?

Hi I really need to know what this poem means because i dont understand it - please help me!

Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

its a poem called break break break and its by lord alfred tennyson
thanks

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

The first stanza refers to the ocean and the narrator's desire to express the feelings that it evokes in him.

The second stanza is a reflection on how the author has a sort of jealously for the people around him that express themselves like he cannot. The boy is very alive and the sailor is young and adventurous.

The third stanza laments the ships who wait in harbor. They are protected ("haven") but they long for someone to come sail them and use them. But the hands and voices of these people are gone now ("vanished hand", "voice that is still".) This also reflects the narrator's feeling of being trapped because boats can't express themselves either.

The last stanza returns again to the subject of the ocean, something that is central to everything in this poem. The use of words like "cold grey stones" in the first stanza and "crags" in the last one reinforce the dreary tone of the work. These images intensify the sorrow expressed by the narrator. In the last stanza the narrator leaves us with the last sad statement that the days when he was alive an expressive (like the boy and the sailor) are "dead" and now he is like the ships waiting in the harbor -- alone, unused, and wishing for days gone by.