Practical Criticism: Tennyson’s ‘Crossing the Bar’
In this close reading, undergraduate Claire Wilkinson looks at a poem where Tennyson seems to be contemplating his own death. The poem contains moments of certainty and uncertainty, and the interplay between these things is vital to its effect.
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. (1889)
In 'Crossing the Bar', Tennyson is speaking about his own impending death. Within the poem, the image of the sea is used to represent the 'barrier' between life and death. The construction of this metaphor centres on the image of 'crossing the bar'; a 'bar' is physically a bar of sand in shallow water. The 'bar' which Tennyson must cross, however, can only be crossed in one direction. This is made explicit in a couple of ways by the poet.
Firstly, we should consider the wider imagery of the poem. The poem opens with the phrase 'Sunset and evening star', immediately placing the reader in a setting at the end of the day. The metaphor can be extended to represent a late stage in the poet's life. This reading is supported by the opening of the third stanza: 'Twilight and evening bell, / And after that the dark!' Time is progressing as the poem develops, and after each reference to physical time, Tennyson makes a personal reference to his future:
'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'
The clear reference to Tennyson's 'moving on' enables us to interpret the image of evening as representing old age. The notion of passing time, evident in the physical darkening of the sky from 'sunset' to 'twilight' to 'dark' is echoed in the rhythm of the poem. Clearly, the poem speaks about the sea, about a tide which 'turns again home'. The tide, we are reminded, has done this before; its rhythm will not be interrupted by the death of the poet. The lengths of the lines alternate between 10, six and four syllables with no fixed rotation:
10 But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
6 Too full for sound and foam,
10 When that which drew from out the boundless deep
4 Turns again home.
The differing lengths of lines evoke the movement of a tide washing upon a beach, something which we all recognise to be cyclic.
Secondly, in considering how the poet has constructed the 'bar' between life and death, we must look at the specifics of his language. The poet is certain of his destination:
'When I put out to sea'
'When I embark'
'When I have crossed the bar'
The repetition of when makes it clear to the reader that the event the poet is discussing is firmly placed in the future; it will happen, but hasn't happened yet. We can contrast this to the use of indefinite phrases in the poem:
'And may there be no moaning of the bar'
'And may there be no sadness of farewell'
'I hope to see my Pilot face to face'
Tennyson makes a clear distinction between events which he knows will happen, and events which he hopes will happen. He cannot assure that there will be 'no sadness of farewell', so he cannot solidify the matter within the poem itself.
The final stanza of the poem is particularly interesting, and deserves some consideration within itself:
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.
There are three aspects of this final stanza that are immediately striking; the capitalisations of 'Time', 'Place' and 'Pilot'. We capitalise proper nouns, such as names and locations, suggesting that Tennyson sees 'Time and Place' as a specific location, such as 'London', and 'his Pilot' as a personal figure. This adds to the element of certainty in the poem: Tennyson has in mind a location in which he will end, and though he can only 'hope' to see his 'Pilot', he has an image he aspires to meet with.
To leave this piece on an interesting note: who or what could possibly be Tennyson's 'Pilot'? (If you have an answer to this question, or another thought about the poem you'd like to share, please leave a comment below.)
Further Reading
Claire Wilkinson has written an article on Tennyson and Religion for the Cambridge Authors site; it touches on this poem as part of its broader analysis of Tennyson's ideas about God. Click here to read the article, or use the menu to the left.
Further Thinking
How (if at all) might the following facts affect the way you read the poem? First: it was written three years before Tennyson died, when the poet was 80. Second: the story goes that he wrote it in twenty minutes on the Isle of Wight ferry. Third: he asked future editors to place it last in collections of his work. Perhaps the poem stands on its own, connecting with readers' lives rather than with the past; but perhaps we need to recognise how it came out of Tennyson's life before we can really understand it.
What do the poems rhymes add to its effect?
November 11th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I have read this page and the article Ms. Wilkinson has written about Tennyson’s ideas of God. Both are well-constructed. As a graduate of Cambridge myself, I can see why the English Department would display them.
Yet, I am intrigued by your question of who the Pilot is. As you rightly point out, Tennyson is speaking of his own demise. After which, he hopes to meet his Pilot (capitalised, as is done with “He” and “Him” in literature when referring to God), a guiding figure … the one who was steering his life.
While he questioned faith always (as all intellectual Christians do, and by so doing, sharpen their faith and understanding of God) this poem says that he hopes to have a personal interaction (face to face) with the Pilot. But as you note with his use of language, he is not certain it will come to pass. This is an expression of humility.
Tennyson’s requesting that publishers put it at the end of his works suggests that it is his dying profession of faith. He wanted this to be his final impression on his readers. The face to face meeting is the point of the poem, coming as it does in the final stanza: the final destination expected when telling of any journey. By requesting that this poem come at the end of his published works, publicly he makes his longed-for encounter indeed the final stanza of his life and works.
Your analysis intrigues me because while the purpose of your essay is to encourage questioning, I wonder that in questioning you have missed the obvious. Perhaps you know this and want to see how the public will respond. Perhaps it is because Cambridge encourages students away from acceptance of faith as simple faith. Indeed, the culture of Cambridge eschews faith as “anti-intellectual” often. But such discourse is disingenuous in case like this, where the author could only have allowed one interpretation of that final stanza.
It’s not like it requires a nuanced translation from ancient Greek.
For your consideration.
James
February 16th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
I agree with James, only differing in one respect: Tennyson’s Pilot was Jesus. I can’t believe how many commentaries I’ve read about this poem which refer to the Pilot as God, never mentioning Jesus, and yet, Tennyson’s faith was Christianity, and Jesus as Christ is the root of that faith. Christ is the Pilot in our earthly life – the Pilot who guides us to the eternal God the Father.
BTW, the purpose of a harbor pilot is to guide mariners through an area which is constantly shifting, such as the sandbar between the river and the open ocean. The local pilot knows the recent changes, and his job is to see that the captain is able to avoid the sand so that the ship doesn’t run aground and break up, thereby causing a shipwreck and the death of the crew. Christ’s job was also to guide believers so that they, if they listened to Him and believed in Him would not die but go on to eternal life.
I’m going to go out on a limb, here, but it’s a sad commentary on our educational system that after 2000 years of Christianity, college-educated people don’t “get” who Tennyson’s Pilot is.
February 17th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Karen – In response to your comment, I think you might be ‘going out on a limb’. This piece is trying to think about the structure, form and content of Tennyson’s poetry. At no point do I make the assertion that the ‘Pilot’ in Tennyson’s poem is not God or Jesus. In fact, I think there’s a good chance that it is. The open ended question at the end of the piece was put there to provoke debate – I was hoping that people might consider the role of Hallam in Tennyson’s life alongside that of Christianity. I think it is for the individual to ultimately decide upon a ‘meaning’ of the poem that is acceptable to them; I don’t think it is within the power of any one critic to determine Tennyson’s intentions in writing the final stanza of ‘Crossing the Bar’. It seems problematic just to say that the ‘Pilot’ simply is Jesus: the two words are not direct synonyms. It also seems problematic to say that any one view of the world is simply the truth.
February 27th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
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.”
April 7th, 2010 at 10:55 am
The Crossing of the Bar reminds me of another imagery by the Poet Rabindranath Tagore. In one of his songs he wrote ‘Why is the fear to cross a simple door? Let the Unknown win’ (capitalization is mine). In Bengali, the native tongue the song was written, does not admit small and capital letters. The rest of the content of the song is different from Tennyson. But the imagery of crossing is not peculiar to Christianity only.
May 18th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Tennyson explained the “Pilot” as “That Divine and Unseen Who is always guiding us”. (This is recorded by Hallam Tennyson in his memoir of his father.)
May 19th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Tennyson also commented: “The Pilot has been on board all the while, but in the dark I have not seen him.”
September 6th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Reading the various commentaries, I find it rather astonishing that the simple truth of the matter that the Pilot ( capitalised ) can be anyone other than Christ Jesus is not patently obvious. The same theme prevades a thousand Christian hymns, I shouldn’t wonder. In the 14th. chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus says very clearly that He and the Father are one.
August 20th, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Hope is a Christian certainty based on faith, not wishful thinking. Tennyson may well have hoped to see his pilot face to face just as Christians with certainty hope the same and look forward to it.
September 8th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
Thank you everyone for your comments on this poem, which I am reading at a funeral for an elderly friend who love poetry, mainly Coleridge, but asked for Tennyson and this poem to be read.
I am totally new to it and absolutely fascinated by your analyses of it, also by the many composers who have set it to music, ranging from classical to mid-west folk.
Certainly reading it I took the Pilot to be God. As a Quaker we talk about the “light of God within each one of us”, so Tennyson’s comment that The Pilot is on board all the while is correct – we just need to allow the light, like a torch, to work for us to highlight what is there.
In Friendship
Jo Fisher
8th September 2011
September 20th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
This truly wonderful poem was chosen as a hymn in our Methodist Hymnbook. Since my earliest days I have loved and admired the poetry. But one day the thought struck me that the imagery is reversed! The Christian in life is sailng on what is often a stormy sea heading for the safety of the harbour. In other words death is not being launched out to sea but coming in to harbour out of the storm. There are other hymns that echo that thought. In particular, Charles Wesley’s “Jesus lover of my soul”, finishes the first verse “Safe into the haven guide, O recieve my soul at last”.
I still love the poem but with that caveat.
Just thinking,
Tom
September 24th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Its a wonderful poem for seamen and provides a vivid visualization for those who have crossed an angry bar! But alas Tennyson uses the term flood to describe what is actually the ebb. Perhaps those who are in the poetry business could explain this. Was it an error on his part as he was not a seaman or is there a meaning that I can not fathom?
February 7th, 2012 at 11:02 pm
It is possible that Arthur Hallam, Tennyson’s close friend to whom “in memoriam” is dedicated to, is the “pilot” he is describing. He mentions that he is hoping to see his pilot face to face, perhaps wondering if in death he will be reunited with his friend. Hallam was also his muse, and a pilot is a boat which guides the larger ships to sea, hence he is guided by the Hallam. The fact that the bar represents death and that he can only see the pilot once he has crossed this boundary, means that it is likely the pilot represents a person who is dead.