Just so, the speaker, considering himself like the water, says that he is returning where he came from. Firstly, we are told that the speaker hopes to see his pilot face to face when he will have crossed the bar. Peter Amidon has used her melody to create a choral setting. Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and older, present wherever religion is present, possibly—under… Crossing the Bar Launch Audio in a New Window. Just as the day has ended, his life too is about to end. It is thought that Tennyson wrote it in elegy, as the poem has a tone of finality about it. The fullness of the tide will peacefully draw home the speaker. "Crossing the bar" is a phrase that is a military (naval) phrase that is used to inform someone about that someone has died. Then after a while it gets dark. "Crossing the Bar" is an 1889 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson that is traditionally the last poem in collections of his work. Here twilight stands for sadness, darkness and grief portray the speaker’s miserable state before his death.In the previous stanza of the poem, we see the speaker’s positive attitude towards death. Source(s) It is interesting to note here the imagery the poet presents before us at the start of the poem. While it might simply be a word to suggest ‘Crossing’ the bar, it is speculated that it might be a reference to Christ, as crost is similar in sound to both Christ and Cross. Virtually any topic for the virtual learner. The stanzas do not stand individually on their own. Crossing the Bar, short poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written in 1889 at age 80, three years before he died and published in the collection Demeter and Other Poems (1889).

He wants to ‘put out to sea’ without the ‘moaning of the bar’. In Tennyson's poem—an elegy or sorts—the speaker is formal, in control of his thoughts and sentiments, claiming readiness for death as a "crossing of the [sand]bar" between life and afterlife. "Crossing the Bar" is an 1889 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson that is traditionally the last poem in collections of his work. ‘The boundless deep’ here apparently stands for the sea, and in an allegorical sense to the place the poet believes he will go to after his death.Here, we should notice that this stanza is a strict continuation of the idea introduced in the first stanza. Just as the day is about to end, the speaker says that his life is drawing to an end as well.Here the poet uses his famous metaphor of ‘Crossing the bar’, describing death as an act of passing beyond life. We use cookies on this website. Assersohn's piece "Crossing the Bar" won the Composers' Competition at the Cornwall International Male Voice Choir Festival, from a field of 40 entries.A folk music inspired setting for the poem with a refrain was created by Rani Arbo, an American bluegrass musician. Like a calm sea wave, which is ‘too full for sound and foam’ the speaker hopes that his death will be silent, smooth and quick, making no fuss.In the subsequent lines, the poet uses the example of the river and the sea to express the kind of death he wishes for himself.

In the stanza, the speaker of the poem talks about the inevitability of death.The poet wishes that when he ‘put(s) out to sea’, that is when he dies, let it be like a ride which seems asleep as it moves. The narrator uses an extended metaphor to compare death to crossing the "sandbar" between the tide or river of life, with its outgoing "flood," and the ocean that lies beyond death, the "boundless deep," to which we return.The bar referred to is a sandspit or similar promontory at the mouth of a river or harbour where tides have deposited sand over time. The water from the sea evaporates and turns into clouds; these clouds bring rain, entering that water into the river, and these rivers too flow, carrying their water and eventually pouring it into the sea. Crossing the Bar, an elegy written by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is a poem focusing on the transience of life and the finality of death. Tennyson is believed to have written the poem (after suffering a serious illness) while on the sea, crossing the The extended metaphor of "crossing the bar" represents travelling serenely and securely from life through death. "Crossing the Bar" is an 1889 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. A summary of Part X (Section8) in Alfred Lord Tennyson's Tennyson’s Poetry. Here, the word pilot is a direct reference to God. It is the call of death. A sandbar is a geographical structure which forms around the mouth of a river, or extends from a ‘Spit’ by slow deposition of sediments carried by the current over millions of years.

"Crossing the bar" is a phrase that is a military (naval) phrase that is used to inform someone about that someone has died. This article was most recently revised and updated by