Crossing the Bar

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"Crossing the Bar" is an 1889 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson that is traditionally the last poem in his anthologies. It is thought that Tennyson wrote it as his own elegy, as the poem has a tone of finality about it. The narrator uses an extended metaphor to compare death to crossing the "sandbar" between the harbour of life and the ocean of death.

Tennyson wrote the poem after a serious illness while at sea, crossing the Solent from Aldworth to Farringford on the Isle of Wight. The words, he said, "came in a moment"[1] Shortly before he died, Tennyson told his son Hallam to "put 'Crossing the Bar' at the end of all editions of my poems".[1]

The poem contains four stanzas that generally alternate between long and short lines. Tennyson employs a traditional ABAB rhyme scheme. Scholars have noted that the form of the poem follows the content: the wavelike quality of the long-then-short lines parallels the narrative thread of the poem.

The poem uses many metaphors as it compares life and death to the being on the sea. The extended metaphor of "crossing of bar" represents travelling from life to death. The Pilot is a metaphor for God; the speaker hopes that he will be able reside in heaven with his creator. Tennyson explained, "The Pilot has been on board all the while, but in the dark I have not seen him…[He is] that Divine and Unseen Who is always guiding us."[1]

A choral version of the poem was premiered by the American composer Charles Ives in prototype form on May 24, 1890 at the Baptist Church in Danbury, Connecticut, and published in its current form (arranged for accompanied chorus) in 1894. The poem was also set to music by the English composer Hubert Parry in 1903.


[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c Hill, Robert W., Jr., ed. (1971). Tennyson's poetry; authoritative texts, juvenilia and early responses, criticism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-09953-9.