Phrasal verb: Wash upon

Question

Non-native english speaker here. The context is songwriting.

Can a tide "wash upon" someone or something?

Answer 1

The tide or waves may wash upon the shore. The use of upon rather than on gives the sense of the water rising to where it washes (=flows) over the shore. The use of wash implies a repetitive phenomenon. Both are appropriate to waves and tides, waves on a shore usually rising and falling rapidly with periods measured in seconds and the tide being a special case of a slowly repeating wave of long period measured in hours.

If water washes somewhere, it flows there, usually repeatedly

Cambridge dictionary

In song writing, poetry or sensual literature, the phrase may be used. I need quote none of the many examples to be found by online search for "tide washes upon the shore").

Historically "wash upon the shore" was more popular than now. Here is the google ngram:

To give you just one representative technical oceanographic example far removed from creative wordplay, please consider:

Unlike the situation in exposed beaches where waves wash upon the shore and replenish the interstitial oxygenated water supply by gravity, the submerged sand has only diffusion processes and currents ...

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KRsr4gVHdPgC&q=%22waves+wash+upon%22&dq=%22waves+wash+upon%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiSsK2-xM_sAhXPilwKHeLQB4sQ6AEwB3oECAkQAg

This technical prose relies on upon (the movement onto the shore, implying later movement off the shore) for its meaning. Only when water subsides is water drawn down into the sand. If the water merely moved on the shore it would not necessarily subside, and no new oxygenated water would be drawn down into the sand.

I conclude that you are justified in using the phrase both by artistic precedent, by previous usage, and by reasoned contemporary technical usage. The phrase also has an easily understandable and not too wide a range of meaning within the context of a song.