Crossing the Bar Find!

Still one of our finest and best-loved Poet Laureates, one of Alfred Tennyson's best-loved poems, and coincidentally among his shorter ones, is Crossing the Bar, published in 1889 and written in 20 minutes after setting out from Lymington on the Yarmouth ferry to his home on the Isle of Wight. Although the Lymington River meanders on its way to the Solent, there is no bar across it (i.e. a sandbank) and residents of Salcombe (where there is a significant bar) sometimes claimthe poem for themselves, but there is no doubting its provenance.

 

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 crost the bar.

 

A recommended introduction is 'Tennyson: Poems Selected by Mick Imlah' (Faber 80pp 2004)

 

29 September 2009 from Friday Next

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