Crossing the Bar

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1889

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Sandbar

You cannot “just” cross a sandbar.

Tennyson summered on the Isle of Wight for more than 20 years during his time as Poet Laureate. In that time, he became familiar with nautical realities of navigating the English Channel in the narrow Solent Strait where the deep and turbulent waters of the open channel came into the inner harbor network of the island.

To use a boat crossing over one of these sandbars as a symbol for dying suggests that Tennyson is not pretending that the “crossing” itself will not be without its terrors. Experienced sailors understand the tricky and sometimes treacherous reality of attempting to push a boat across the sandbar. Incoming deep water brings with it huge deposits of sand which, when the waves hit the shallower water of the strait, get dropped along a line roughly separating the strait from the open sea. Those sandbars are mapped to help in navigation but the nature of the currents can alter the position and height of the sandbar. No sandbar is the same. Today, any boat attempting to cross the bar at Solent Strait must register before attempting the crossing to help in any search and rescue operations should the crossing go badly.

Tennyson, familiar with the risky crossing, uses that sandbar to encapsulate his sense of the experience of dying. He does not pretend, in his eagerness to hit the open sea, that he does not recognize the potential for treacherous experiences when passing over the sandbar. By hoping for a full tide as his boat heads out to see, Tennyson offers his hope for a smooth crossing, knowing the odds may in fact be against it.

The Pilot

Within Tennyson’s nautical parable of dying, the passenger on the boat, the one approaching death, must wait until the boat has cleared the treacherous sandbar that leads out to the open sea before he can expect at last to meet the Pilot. Within the Christian tradition, a person cannot see the God who directs the entire voyage of life without experiencing death first.

The irony of this is not lost on Tennyson. Would not the anxiety created by the passage over the sandbar be significantly alleviated if the pilot introduced himself before the launching seaward? Tennyson was a Christian, certainly, but an unorthodox one; he was more curious than dogmatic in his faith, with an intellect too broad, too grasping to settle for unquestioned faith. In his later years, when he first composed the meditation that would become “Crossing the Bar,” Tennyson’s far-ranging study of theology convinced him the universe was less the Christian cosmos with its harsh vision of the afterlife and a God who keeps track of sins with the ruthless efficiency of a bookkeeper. In this, he was more comfortable with the Christian idea of God as the cosmos itself, a version of pantheism in which dying fused an individual soul to this transcendental cosmos without the drama of judgment and damnation. Thus, crossing the sandbar would immerse the dying person in the very principle of God that animates the universe.

But Tennyson could not be sure.

Thus, his use of the symbol of the Pilot God is prefaced in the poem by a phrase that is both once joyous and terrifying, confident and anxious: “I hope” in Line 14.

The Evening Call

Tennyson asks in all but words: do you know in your heart, in your soul, in your very essence, do you know when it is time to die? Whether you are in hospice or playing a round of golf, working your garden or watching your grandkids, do you know when it is time for you to die? Tennyson suggests that when his voyager is set to sail, set to head out to the open sea, that voyage is prefaced by a feeling that the sunset and the evening star (that is the planet Venus) summon him in “one clear call” (Line 2). The word clear suggests the lack of ambivalence—the voyage itself may be a bit mysterious and the identity of the ship’s pilot might be a bit vague, but the summons is clear. No doubt, the poet argues, it is time to go.

It is a matter of conjecture, particularly for people of a certain age. Does a person confronting the approach of death know it is time to go? Tennyson penned his own elegy just weeks after a near-brush with death. Is he sharing that indeed, it feels as if the night begins to call us?

For the poet, the experience of death in its totality is a calming thing—the poem lacks anxieties. The speaker does not fight the approaching voyage, never questions his readiness to depart. Do not mourn my departure—it is time for me to go. That evening call then symbolizes the possibility that when death approaches, a person will know and more importantly will go along. The evening call represents the courage and confidence to die without drama.