Crossing The Bar- a Metaphor

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Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” is a metaphoric account of an attitude and acceptance of death. In the poem, the land, though unmentioned, is life, ocean is a representation of death, and the bar, or sandbar is the borderline between life and death. The speaker seems to hope that “which drew from out the boundless deep/ turns again home “ (Lines 7-8), which represents how he will be taken to death. The “dark” that is mentioned in Line 10 refers to the state of being after the speaker passes on, but he hopes that there will “be no sadness of farewell/ when I embark” (Lines 11-12), meaning the he hopes no one will be sad when he dies. The speaker knows that he will be taken beyond “Time and Place” (Line 13), meaning beyond life as everyone knows it, but he hopes that when he gets there, he will see his “Pilot face to face”, meaning God, the leader of his life. The poem seems to read like waves on an ocean, echoing the metaphor of the poem. It follows an ABAB rhyme scheme, similar to waves crashing and falling. The poem reads as calm and serene for the most part, but the second lines of the first and third stanzas both employ exclamation marks, and they both refer to death. After those lines, the poem resumes its normal pattern, suggesting that death is just a normal part of life, and when someone dies, people should not be sad or change their course. The stanzas also follow this pattern. The first and third stanza are a bit more alarming overall, as they talk about the speaker being called to death and the aftermath of it. The second and fourth stanzas begin with contradictory words, balancing what has been said in the first and third stanzas. The second and fourth stanzas are more like a reassurance that death will happen, and it is okay. This is similar to the lines crashing and falling, but on a larger scale, adding to the overall metaphor that the

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