It’s not news that Shakespeare had Marcus Brutus tell us that “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune…”, and that the failure to attend to the tide results in misery, and being forever doomed to the shoals of life. Anyone who passes their time on the sea also knows the advantage of making the tide for a journey, or even for the most productive times for sea angling.
It’s equally not news that “time and tide wait for no man” – a quote attributed to Chaucer in the 1300s, but believed to have older roots. There is a suggestion that the “tide” in the above quote refers to a season, rather than a nautical tide, but the intent is the same. We can’t hold back the progression of the tide, the seasons, or the clock.