Love has a tide!

“Love has a tide!” – Helen Hunt Jackson

So speaks the poet of passion and sorrow, Helen Hunt Jackson, whose heart understood both the calm and the storm of human affection. In this brief, radiant truth, she captures the eternal rhythm of love — its rise and fall, its ebb and flow, its moments of abundance and its moments of retreat. To say “love has a tide” is to say that it is living, breathing, and subject to nature’s law of change. Just as the sea swells beneath the pull of the moon, so too does the heart move beneath the gravity of emotion. Love, no matter how deep, is not static. It moves, shifts, and transforms — and that is its beauty.

The origin of this wisdom lies in the poet’s own life, for Helen Hunt Jackson was a woman of fierce feeling and profound loss. Twice widowed, scarred by grief yet still capable of tenderness, she knew that love is not a fixed possession, but a current that moves through time and circumstance. One cannot command it, nor chain it, nor keep it at flood forever. There are moments when the tide is full — when love overflows the heart like sunlight on water — and moments when it recedes, leaving the sands bare and silent. Yet even then, though unseen, the ocean remains. So too does love — constant in essence, though changing in form.

The ancients would have recognized this truth. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “Everything flows.” To him, the river was the image of life itself — always moving, never the same, yet still the same river. Love, too, follows this law. It renews itself in movement, not in stillness. The one who demands that love remain unchanged asks the sea not to move, the moon not to pull, the seasons not to turn. To love rightly, then, is to love with acceptance — to embrace the tide, not fight against it. For even when the waters seem to recede, they are only gathering strength to rise again.

Consider the story of Abigail Adams, wife of the second President of the United States, John Adams. Their letters, written across oceans and wars, are filled with longing and patience. There were times when duty and distance seemed to drain their closeness, yet their love endured, reshaping itself with every separation. She understood, as Helen Hunt Jackson did, that love’s tide is not a sign of weakness but of life itself. It must breathe, must retreat, must return. Their union, sustained not by constant presence but by enduring devotion, is proof that the heart’s tide may ebb, but never vanish.

In the realm of the soul, the tide of love teaches humility. It reminds us that love is not ours to command, but ours to honor. When we cling too tightly, we suffocate its motion; when we fear its retreat, we lose the peace that comes with trust. The wise do not despair when the tide goes out — they wait by the shore, knowing it will come again. For love, when true, is faithful to its nature. It may change its form — from passion to friendship, from closeness to memory — but it never ceases to be love.

Helen Hunt Jackson, in her quiet insight, gives us both comfort and warning. Do not mistake the stillness for emptiness, nor the quiet sea for death. Love has a tide — it teaches us when to hold and when to release, when to give and when to be still. The heart that understands this rhythm will not break when the waters withdraw; it will rest in patience, knowing that all things that live must move, and all things that move may return renewed.

So, let this be the lesson to those who walk the path of love: cherish its fullness, endure its ebb, and trust its rhythm. Do not demand constancy from what was born to flow. Tend your heart as you would a shore — steady, open, welcoming. For in time, the tide will always rise again. And when it does, it will bring with it a deeper peace — the peace of one who has learned that love, like the sea, is not to be possessed, but to be witnessed, honored, and forever revered.