Both Uses of
ebb
in
This Side of Paradise
- There was a poem I read somewhere—you'll say Ella Wheeler Wilcox and laugh—but listen: "For this is wisdom—to love and live, To take what fate or the gods may give, To ask no question, to make no prayer, To kiss the lips and caress the hair, Speed passion's ebb as we greet its flow, To have and to hold, and, in time—let go."†
Chpt 2.1ebb = decline -- typically gradually as with the height of the tide
- Sometimes I think that with both of us the secret of success, when we find it, is the mystical element in us: something flows into us that enlarges our personalities, and when it ebbs out our personalities shrink; I should call your last two letters rather shrivelled.†
Chpt 2.2 *ebbs = declines -- typically gradually as with the height of the tide