New Zealand poet James K. Baxter published "The Bay" in his 1948 collection Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness. The poem's speaker recalls their experiences swimming and playing at a beautiful bay as a child and laments that those days are long gone now. Nowadays, the speaker feels, life's roads seem to lead "Nowhere," and its alleys are forbidding and "overgrown": the joys of the past seem so distant it's as if the bay the speaker once knew never really existed.

• Read the full text of “The Bay”

• “The Bay” Summary

• “The Bay” Themes

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    Growing Up, Time, and Loss

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-20

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Bay”

  • Lines 1-6

    On the road ...
    ... everything comes easy.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 7-12

    And by the ...
    ... for the taniwha.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 13-16

    So now I ...
    ... the birds rising.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 17-20

    A thousand times ...
    ... cannot turn away.

    

    

    

    

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• “The Bay” Symbols

  • 

    The Landscape

    Where this symbol appears in the poem:

    • Lines 7-8: “And by the bay itself were cliffs with carved names / And a hut on the shore beside the Maori ovens.”
    • Line 10: “those autumnal shallows”
    • Lines 11-12: “riding the logs / Upstream”

• “The Bay” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Juxtaposition

    

    

    

    

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    Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-6
    • Lines 13-20

  • Metaphor

    

    

    

    

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    Where metaphor appears in the poem:

    • Lines 4-6: “How many roads we take that lead to Nowhere, / The alley overgrown, no meaning now but a loss: / Not that veritable garden where everything comes easy.”
    • Lines 17-18: “A thousand times an hour is torn across / And burned for the sake of going on living.”

  • Paradox

    

    

    

    

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    Where paradox appears in the poem:

    • Line 19: “But I remember the bay that never was”

  • Simile

    

    

    

    

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    Where simile appears in the poem:

    • Lines 19-20: “But I remember the bay that never was / And stand like stone and cannot turn away.”

  • Alliteration

    

    

    

    

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    Where alliteration appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “bay”
    • Line 2: “bathed,” “bamboos”
    • Line 3: “Now,” “stand,” “say”
    • Line 4: “Nowhere”
    • Line 5: “no,” “now”
    • Line 7: “cliffs,” “carved”
    • Line 9: “boats,” “banks”
    • Line 15: “carved cliffs”
    • Line 16: “currents,” “round,” “rocks”
    • Line 17: “times,” “torn”
    • Line 19: “But,” “bay”
    • Line 20: “stand,” “stone”

• “The Bay” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Rushes
  • Bamboos
  • Veritable
  • Maori ovens
  • Pumice
  • Shallows
  • Taniwha
  • Surf
  • Outcrying
  • (Location in poem: Line 1: “On the road to the bay was a lake of rushes”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Bay”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “The Bay” Speaker

• “The Bay” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “The Bay”

• More “The Bay” Resources

  • External Resources

    • Baxter's Biography — Learn more about the poet's life and work via the Poetry Foundation. 

    • Baxter In His Own Voice — Listen to a recording of Baxter reading aloud.

    • Baxter's Last Years — Read an essay in which the poet Chris Gallavin describes his visit to Jerusalem (Hiruharama), the commune where Baxter lived the last three years of his life. 

    • Baxter on the Maori — Watch a video of Baxter discussing the lives of the Maori, New Zealand's indigenous people.

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by James K. Baxter

    • Elegy For My Father's Father

    • Farmhand

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