Envy

[DanielStrigle]

I watch the oceans current, washing the coast clean.
Tide upon tide I witness natures natural clean.
If only everything could be so pure, so true as the oceans current,
washing the coast clean.
Honesty in simplest function, cleaning the events in stone eroding them youthful again.
If only everything could be so Unrelenting, so Honest without retraction,
as the oceans current washing the coast clean.

[Grumbleguts]

I think that the poem is too short for a three-fold repitition of 'ocean's current washing the coast clean' to work. Two you could probably get away with but three is labouring the point in my opinion. I would also lose the comma in the first line and at the end of line 3 as they are ungrammatical and break up the flow of the lines unnaturally. You also need to add apostrophes in the words ocean's and nature's.

A nice idea. I like the phrase, 'cleaning the events in stone eroding them youthful again' (although this needs an extra comma after stone. Sorry to be so pedantic, it's the teacher in me.)

[blp]

I find quite a lot to like and I think the repetition is analagous to the action of tides, but I find the obsession with cleanliness a little bathetic.

[Jarndyce]

I'm pretty much in agreement with what was said above. The repition is understandable, but a bit heavy-handed. If you want to re-use the line, perhaps play with a vilanelle form a bit.

But subtle is best here, I think. Look to Yeats for help:

"I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;"

Here, Yeats doesn't try to tell you about the repetition of the waves, but instead uses the sounds of the words to do it. Read it aloud:

"lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore" just sounds like the small waves.

Or perhaps Arnold:

"Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in."