Crossing The Bar

7 Pages 1804 Words

How can one accept the fact of death? Most People are accepting to the fact that death is inevitable, but it is when one is challenged or personally involved in a deathly situation when it becomes difficult to accept the ramifications of death. People cope with death in many different ways, for example, some people may be fearful or deny the certainty of dying and others may be curious about their passing to another world. Tennyson wrote about death and what it meant to him so that we may understand his views about passing over to another divine world. Different authors have different ways in exhibiting their feelings, and poetry is one method to express the authors feelings or emotions in an unusual way so that it may symbolize what he or she is thinking. Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote “Crossing The Bar” with distinctive metaphors, specific mechanics, and significant imagery, to convey his accepting attitude towards death.
The exceptional metaphorical methods that Tennyson utilized in “Crossing The Bar” plays a major role in the way this poem is interpreted. In the first stanza Tennyson suggests that when death is called upon him, which he knows is not far away because of his age of eighty one years old, he will have no regrets about crossing over to the divine world (Huckel 150). This is confirmed in his poem when he says, “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,”(Sparknotes 1). The first line uses the words sunset and evening star to create an image of that which is somewhat Godly, or above any worldly experience (Buckley 253). It is not only evident that he relates the sunset with the passing to night from day similar to death from life, but also Tennyson often “connects the West with images of the sea, of growth, and, paradoxically, of death” as stated by Clyde de L. Ryals in Theme and Symbol in Tennyson‘s Poems to 1850 (Ryals 129)....