Crossing the Bar - Alfred Lord Tennyson
Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
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.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
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.
Summary
The speaker heralds the setting of the sun and the rise of the evening star, and hears that he is being called. He hopes that the ocean will not make the mournful sound of waves beating against a sand bar when he sets out to sea. Rather, he wishes for a tide that is so full that it cannot contain sound or foam and therefore seems asleep when all that has been carried from the boundless depths of the ocean returns back out to the depths. The speaker announces the close of the day and the evening bell, which will be followed by darkness. He hopes that no one will cry when he departs, because although he may be carried beyond the limits of time and space as we know them, he retains the hope that he will look upon the face of his “Pilot” when he has crossed the sand bar.
Form
This poem consists of four quatrain stanzas rhyming ABAB. The first and third lines of each stanza are always a couple of beats longer than the second and fourth lines, although the line lengths vary among the stanzas.
Commentary
Tennyson wrote “Crossing the Bar” in 1889, three years before he died. The poem describes his placid and accepting attitude toward death. Although he followed this work with subsequent poems, he requested that “Crossing the Bar” appear as the final poem in all collections of his work.
Tennyson uses the metaphor of a sand bar to describe the barrier between life and death. A sandbar is a ridge of sand built up by currents along a shore. In order to reach the shore, the waves must crash against the sandbar, creating a sound that Tennyson describes as the “moaning of the bar.” The bar is one of several images of liminality in Tennyson’s poetry: in “Ulysses,” the hero desires “to sail beyond the sunset”; in “Tithonus”, the main character finds himself at the “quiet limit of the world,” and regrets that he has asked to “pass beyond the goal of ordinance.”
The other important image in the poem is one of “crossing,” suggesting Christian connotations: “crossing” refers both to “crossing over” into the next world, and to the act of “crossing” oneself in the classic Catholic gesture of religious faith and devotion. The religious significance of crossing was clearly familiar to Tennyson, for in an earlier poem of his, the knights and lords of Camelot “crossed themselves for fear” when they saw the Lady of Shalott lying dead in her boat. The cross was also where Jesus died; now as Tennyson himself dies, he evokes the image again. So, too, does he hope to complement this metaphorical link with a spiritual one: he hopes that he will “see [his] Pilot face to face.”
The ABAB rhyme scheme of the poem echoes the stanzas’ thematic patterning: the first and third stanzas are linked to one another as are the second and fourth. Both the first and third stanzas begin with two symbols of the onset of night: “sunset and evening star” and “twilight and evening bell.” The second line of each of these stanzas begins with “and,” conjoining another item that does not fit together as straightforwardly as the first two: “one clear call for me” and “after that the dark!” Each of these lines is followed by an exclamation point, as the poet expresses alarm at realizing what death will entail. These stanzas then conclude with a wish that is stated metaphorically in the first stanza: “may there be no moaning of the bar / When I put out to sea”; and more literally in the third stanza: “And may there be no sadness of farewell / When I embark.” Yet the wish is the same in both stanzas: the poet does not want his relatives and friends to cry for him after he dies. Neither of these stanzas concludes with a period, suggesting that each is intimately linked to the one that follows.
The second and fourth stanzas are linked because they both begin with a qualifier: “but” in the second stanza, and “for though” in the fourth. In addition, the second lines of both stanzas connote excess, whether it be a tide “too full for sound and foam” or the “far” distance that the poet will be transported in death.
Study Questions & Essay Topics
Study Questions
1.
How did Tennyson’s poetry change after he became Poet Laureate in 1850?
Tennyson’s later poetry was primarily narrative rather than lyrical. For example, unlike “Mariana,” which described a particular emotional state through landscape, his later poem Maud took the form of a “monodrama” (in Tennyson’s own words), in which a speaker tells his story in a sequence of short lyrics in varying meters. In addition, whereas his later works considered themes from mythology, history, or personal memory, Tennyson’s later poetry dealt with issues of current national concern. As Poet Laureate, Tennyson represented the literary voice of the nation and, as such, made occasional pronouncements on political affairs. For example, in “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854), he depicted a disastrous battle in the Crimean War and praised the heroism of the British soldiers. In 1859, Tennyson published the first four Idylls of the King, a group of twelve blank verse narrative poems tracing the story of the legendary King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. This collection, dedicated to Prince Albert, enjoyed much popularity among the royal family, who saw Arthur’s lengthy reign as a representation of Queen Victoria’s 64-year rule (1837-1901).
2.Tennyson said that as a child he was haunted by “the passion of the past.” In what ways can Tennyson be considered a poet of the past?
Most of Tennyson’s best poems ponder the past. “The Lady of Shalott” and the poems within Idylls of the King take place in medieval England and capture a world of knights in shining armor and their damsels in distress. In addition to treating the history of his nation, Tennyson also explores the mythological past, as articulated in classical works of Homer, Virgil, and Dante. His “Ulysses” and “The Lotos- Eaters” draw upon actual incidents in Homer’s Odyssey . Likewise, his ode “To Virgil” abounds with allusions to incidents in the great poet’s Aeneid , especially the fall of Troy. Tennyson thus looked both to historical and mythological pasts as repositories for his poetry. Tennyson’s personal past, too, figures prominently in his work. The sudden death of his closest friend Arthur Henry Hallam when Tennyson was just 24 dealt a great emotional blow to the young poet, who spent the next ten years writing over a hundred poems dedicated to his departed friend, later collected and published as “In Memoriam” in 1850. This lengthy work describes Tennyson’s memories of the time he spent with Hallam, including their days at Cambridge University. “In Memoriam” also reflects Tennyson’s struggle with the Victorians’ growing awareness of another sort of past: the vast expanse of geological time and evolutionary history. His treatment of the important scientific issues of his day represents an attempt to come to terms with the evolutionary past history of our species and our world. Tennyson can thus be considered a poet of the historical, mythological, personal, and evolutionary past.
3.
How did Tennyson respond to the scientific advances of his day?
Tennyson lived through many important discoveries and developments in the fields of biology, astronomy, and geology. In 1830-33, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology extended the history of the earth back millions of years and reduced the stature of the human race in time. Astronomers presented a map of the sky overwhelming in its vastness. Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) and Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) made humans just another species within the animal kingdom. The new discoveries implied a view of humanity that much distressed many Victorians, including Tennyson. In Maud, for example, he describes the stars as “cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand / His nothingness into man”; unlike the Romantics, he possessed a painful awareness of the brutality and indifference of “Nature red in tooth and claw.” Although Tennyson associated evolution with progress, he also worried that the notion seemed to contradict the biblical story of creation and long-held assumptions about man’s place in the world. Nonetheless, in “In Memoriam,” he insists that we must keep our faith despite the latest discoveries of science: he writes, “Strong Son of God, immortal Love / Whom we, that have not seen they face, / By faith, and faith alone, embrace / Believing where we cannot prove.” At the end of the poem, he concludes that God’s eternal plan includes purposive biological development; thus he reassures his Victorian readers that the new science does not mean the end of the old faith. Tennyson thus provided the Victorians with a way of reconciling the new discoveries of science with their personal and religious convictions about man’s place and purpose.
Suggested Essay Topics
1. In what ways was Tennyson an heir to the Romantic generation? In what ways did he differ from his predecessors?
2. How did the death of Arthur Henry Hallam impact Tennyson’s poetry?
3. How does the refrain change in the various stanzas of “Mariana”? Do these changes indicate any sort of development or progression in the poem?
4. “The Lady of Shalott” has most commonly been interpreted as a poem about the relationship between art and life. How can the Lady’s story be interpreted in these terms? Do you find this interpretation compelling?
8. In what way do “Ulysses” and “The Lotos- Eaters” present conclusions thematically antithetical to one another? Do these poems speak to one another? What conclusions might both support?
5. Several of Tennyson’s poems have mythological as well as autobiographical origins. How do these origins come into play in a poem such as “Ulysses” or “The Epic”?
6. Compare the different ways in which Tennyson chooses a classical theme or figure to symbolically discuss the notion of departing from life’s natural course? Consider specifically the poems “Tithonus,” “Ulysses,” and “The Lotos-Eaters.”
7. Tennyson uses several Christian images in his poetry, including the three Christmases that structure time in “In Memoriam” and the image of the Pilot in “Crossing the Bar.” What other such images does Tennyson employ? Is Tennyson making a statement about Christianity in these references? What might he be saying?
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