# Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba explained — Poetry

> Chapter companion for Poetry by James Joyce.

## What happens

The narrator observes young rowers on the water at San Sabba, hearing their hearts cry out toward love, but also hearing the natural world sigh with the finality of loss and the impossibility of return.

## Themes in this chapter

### Love and Longing

The young hearts cry 'Loveward,' expressing a yearning for love that is ultimately unfulfilled.

### Transience and Loss

The repeated refrain 'No more, return no more!' emphasizes the irreversible passage of time and the permanence of loss.

### Nature and Mood

The prairie grasses sighing and the wild wind passing mirror the melancholy mood of the speaker.

## Character check-ins

### Narrator

Observes the needleboats and reflects on the cries of young hearts and the sighing grasses.

### Love

The direction toward which the young hearts cry, though unattainable.

## Key lines

> I heard their young hearts crying Loveward above the glancing oar

I heard the young rowers' hearts yearning for love as their oars flashed in the water.

_The narrator interprets the rowers' emotional state as a longing for love._

> And heard the prairie grasses sighing: No more, return no more!

And I heard the grasses of the prairie sigh that nothing will come back again.

_Nature itself echoes the theme of irreversible loss._

> No more will the wild wind that passes Return, no more return.

The wild wind that blows by will never come back, just as the past cannot be reclaimed.

_Final affirmation of the impossibility of return._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_11_se/chapters/watching-the-needleboats-at-san-sabba
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_11_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_11_se/chapters