Green Billows

In Mary Robinson's The Haunted Beach, "green billows" are mentioned in eight of the nine stanzas of the poem. But what are these green billows and what can the reader learn from them?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a billow in a number of ways including, "a great swelling of the sea often caused by wind." The picture to the left is likely the image the author is trying to convey in her text.

These green billows are described in four different ways, where the green billows:

1) made
2) stray'd
3) play'd
4) play

I want to focus on the fact that the first three words are in past tense, referring to events/actions of the past, whereas the fourth word is in the present tense. These words alone give us a skeletal map of the time-series of the poem. While the majority of this piece of poetry dwells on past events and occurrences, the last paragraphs switch to present tense. Upon first reading, at least for me, I did not so much pick up on this transition in reference of time. So, broadly speaking, these green billows can be said to represent time in the poem; although things occur in the past, they also occur in the present, which itself become the past. The green billows are a never-ending natural clock.