My favorite imagery of this idea comes from the last two stanzas of a poem:

    For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
       Seem here no painful inch to gain,
    Far back through creeks and inlets making,
       Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

    And not by eastern windows only,
       When daylight comes, comes in the light,
    In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
       But westward, look, the land is bright.

— Arthur Hugh Clough https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43959/say-not-the-str...