“Crossing the Bar” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Credit: biography.com

In his 1889 poem “Crossing the Bar,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson writes of his impending death. A sandbar in shallow water represents the barrier between life and death in this poem, in an extended metaphor for which the poem is named. “Sunset and evening star,” the poem begins, placing us in the sunset of the poet’s life. “Twilight and evening bell/and after that, the dark!” he continues in the third stanza. The passage of time throughout the poet’s life is symbolized through the darkening of the sky from “sunset” to “twilight” to “dark.” As the poem continues, Tennyson continues his march towards death, and asks that his death not be a mournful event:

And may there be no moaning of the bar/When I put out to sea
And may there be no sadness of farewell,/when I embark

Rather than the mournful sound of waves beating against a sandbar when he “turns again home,” he wishes for a tide so full it can’t contain sound:

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Credit: Tennysonscelebritycircle.port.ac.uk

Tennyson wrote “Crossing the Bar” three years before he died. It is believed that he wrote the poem while at sea, after suffering a serious illness. Shortly before he died, Tennyson told his eldest son, Hallam Tennyson: “Mind you put ‘Crossing the Bar’ at the end of all editions of my poems.” When Alfred Lord Tennyson did die (of gout) in October, 1892, he was buried in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey.

In the final stanza of the poem, Tennyson writes:

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

“The Pilot” is God. His son’s biography confirmed that Tennyson was an unorthodox Christian. “Crossing the Bar” reflects the Christian narrative of death, with the tide metaphor an apt one for capturing the belief that people are created by God and at the end of their lives return home to God.