Which writer coined the phrase “ships that pass in the night”?
Emily Dickinson
William Shakespeare
Edgar Allan Poe
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Fact: This line comes from “The Theologian’s Tale” in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn. The poem reads: “Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing / Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness…” Longfellow uses the image of ships briefly encountering one another in the dark to symbolize fleeting human connections—moments when two people cross paths for a short time, share a brief interaction, and then drift apart, never to meet again. The metaphor emphasizes how people, like ships at sea, may come close for just an instant before vanishing into the vast unknown.
Correct Answer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow