The title has been repeated in the first, second, and last stanza. This is because, in the third stanza, it describes the anguish of the people and their reaction. In this stanza, the people as a whole are the subject. In the first and second stanza, the subject is the sea. I think the relevance of the title is that it describes exactly what the poem is talking about. It talks about how the sea has flooded the land using a metaphor because obviously, the sea does not eat the land, though it may have seemed that way to the people. I think maybe the repetition of the title in the last stanza, followed by; "Eats the whole land at home" is kind of a somber sign off to the sad poem.
Alliteration is one of the many literary devices in the poem. One example is; "It came one day at the dead of night". Day and dead are the alliterations here, and it signifies how suddenly the sea came and also contrasts their appearance. The next example of alliteration is; "Collecting the firewood from the hearths". "Firewood from" is the alliteration here. This talks of how it came to take away our culture and tradition, hearths in this line referring to our culture. When you take firewood from a fire, the fire begins to burn out. This is what this line of alliteration refers to.
The next is visual imagery. An example is; "Destroying the cement walls,
And carried away the fowls, The cooking-pots and the ladles,". This helps you imagine the devastation caused, and just how bad it was. It adds a lot of impact to his words.
Metaphor, or extended metaphor, is the last of the literary devices I will talk about in the poem. The whole poem is an extended metaphor for colonialism. The sea represents the Europeans, and the town is the culture. The Europeans destroyed our culture, and our identity just like the sea destroyed the town. That brings us to the themes.
One significant theme in the poem is the loss of identity. Just like the sea took away Adena's trinkets, the Whites took away our culture. An evident example of this is evangelism. Although some may argue it was for the better, it doesn't change how it was spread. We used to worship many gods, it was our culture, then the Whites came, and took it away. As I mentioned earlier in alliteration, the hearth mentioned in the poem is our culture, and the sea taking the firewood is the Whites taking our culture away.
The next is colonization and the devastation caused by it. The line that talks about how Aku stood weeping with her two children by her side are a sad, but useful example. It talks about just how devastating colonization was, the lives it took, and the homes it destroyed. Aku stands and weeps as she thinks about all of this. This also explains one of the importances of personification in the poem. It presents the ocean as clever. An example is "It came one day at the dead of night." It makes it seem like this was planned, instead of the ocean randomly stumbling upon the town, and flooding it by accident.
The last theme is the power of nature. On the surface, the poem is about a horrible disaster. This poem is about what the sea can do, and just how evil it can be. The sea seems to be such a stoic, peaceful body at times, and the poem acts as a huge contrast to that.