Analysis Of Crossing The Bar By Tennyson

In the poem, “Crossing the Bar” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson the poet speaks about a journey to the other side, or in other words, death. He uses imagery to describe someone that is ready to set sail on a voyage of no return. We always think of death as something dark, something awful, even scary; however, because of the imagery in this poem, death does not seem scary at all. The wording in the poem has a serene and pleasant sound. The theme here is about death and embracing it, instead of fearing it. He is ready to meet his creator, which in this poem he calls, “my Pilot,” (15), which symbolizes God.
The structure of the poem is a mixture of iambic meters and lots of metaphors. It is composed of 16 lines, four quatrain stanzas and, it rhythms in ABAB, with near rhymes on B. …show more content…
In the next two lines, “And may there be no sadness of farewell / When I embark” (11-12) he repeats that he doesn’t want anybody mourning his death. However here the imagery has changed because, here he mentions, “Twilight” instead of “Sunset” which indicates a darker moment; and he hears a bell instead of a calling which represents time has passed form evening to night. Every other end word in this stanza like, “bell” and “farewell” rhyme, as well as “dark and “embark.” In the fourth and final stanza, “For though from out our bourne of Time and Place / The flood may bear me far”(13-14) here the speaker is finally telling us that he was warn out his time in this world and that he is going to die. In the final two lines, “I hope to see my Pilot face to face / When I have crossed the bar”(15-16) he hopes to see God in the afterlife. The choice of words in his final stanza is soft indicating peace and tranquility. These set of end words, “place,” “face,” rhyme and “far” and “bar”