An 1889 poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) called 'Crossing the Bar' is considered an elegy, a reflection or lament for the dead. In the poem, Tennyson is serving as a narrator or speaker and employing an extended metaphor to compare death with crossing the sandbar, between the river of life with its outgoing flood and the ocean that lies beyond- a metaphor for death, akin to the boundless deep, to which we may return.

The first line part of the poem reads:

"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,

Tennyson may have written the poem after suffering a serious illness while on the sea, crossing the Solent (a strait) that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland of England. Alternatively it has been suggested he may have written it on a yacht anchored in Salcombe, a popular resort town in southwest England.

"The words", he said, "came in the moment". And then shortly before he died, Tennyson told his son Hallam to "put" 'Crossing of the Bar' at the end of all editions of my poems".

The extended metaphor of "crossing the bar" represents traveling serenely and securely from life through death. Later in the poem a pilot is mentioned, again a metaphor for God whom the narrator hopes to meet face to face.

Tennyson, was a British poet, Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland from 1850 to 1892 during much of Queen Victoria's reign.

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