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Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1889
Crossing the Bar
The full text of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem, what it means in plain words, and its best lines as pictures you can download and share.
- Poet
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Published
- 1889
- First line
- Sunset and evening star
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 tho’ 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 crost the bar.
Best lines
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Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Meaning and summary
The poet pictures his death as a ship leaving harbour at evening and crossing the sandbar into the open sea. He hopes for a calm, full tide, with no “moaning” of the waves and no sad farewells, as the soul returns to the boundless deep it came from.
Beyond time and place he hopes to meet his “Pilot”, God, face to face. It is a calm, hopeful poem about death; Tennyson asked that it be printed at the end of every collection of his poems.
Form
Four four-line stanzas, rhyming ABAB, with long and short lines alternating like the rise and fall of the tide.
About the poet
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) was Poet Laureate of Britain for over forty years. He wrote it in 1889, at eighty, after a serious illness.
Poems
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Questions
About the poem
What is Crossing the Bar about?
Death, pictured as a calm voyage out to sea, with the hope of meeting God.
Who is the Pilot?
God, whom the poet hopes to see after death.
What is “the bar”?
A sandbar at the mouth of a harbour, the line between the harbour and the open sea.