Crossing The BarSunset and evening star,And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the barWhen I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from outthe boundless deepTurns again home.

Words by Alfred, Lord Tennyson / Music by Sir Joseph Barnby1-2

Crossing The Bar(Twilight and evening bell,)Twilight and evening bell,And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewellWhen I embark;

For though from out our bourne of time and placeThe flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to faceWhen I have crossed the bar.

Amen.

2-2

Sunset and evening star,    And one clear call for me!•The poem opens with the speaker talking about the "sunset" and the "evening star." It is the end of the day ("sunset"), and the evening star, which is actually the planet Venus, is rising.•The end of the day is, apparently, a "clear call" for the speaker. But a "clear call" for what? To go home? Is there some kind of horn blowing? Does he have really stellar reception on his cell?•At this point in the poem, it's still too early to tell, but we'll keep the image in mind. Maybe it's a metaphor for something.•But wait a minute. We know already that Tennyson wrote this puppy when he was nearing the end of his life. So maybe—just maybe—he's speaking metaphorically here about his approaching death. That would explain the sunset, and the call could be all those trumpets, beckoning him to heaven.•But then again, the speaker is also trying not to think about himself.

Lines 3-4And may there be no moaning of the bar,    When I put out to sea,•The speaker hopes there will be no "moaning of the bar" when he puts out to sea. Sage words, those are. If there's one thing Shmoop knows, it's that moaning and moping in bars is always a bad idea.•Except the bar here refers to a sandbar—not the boozy kind. Sandbars often form in the mouths of rivers and harbors, and they're something you need to get past if you're hoping to set sail on the wide-open ocean. •Apparently the speaker doesn't want the sandbar to be disturbed by his departure. But if we really are talking figuratively about death here (as we guessed in the first two lines), then we'll have to interpret what's going on in those terms.•If he is talking about his departure from life (and not a literal departure from an actual harbor), then he doesn't want the sandbar, or anybody else for that matter, to make a huge fuss out of it. •In that sense, it sounds like the sandbar is a metaphor for the boundary between life and death, or life and the afterlife. And to reach the afterlife, he has to cross that bar.•Shmoopers and Shmoopettes, now that we have one stanza behind us, it's time to talk form. We know we're working with something traditional because we've got some rhyming action going down. Star rhymes with bar, and me rhymes with sea. Looks like we've got ourselves a good old-fashioned ABAB rhyme scheme.•But what about meter? Well, that's a little less clear. Lines 1, 2, and 4 all have six syllables and a sort of daDUM daDUM feeling about them. And line 3 has ten syllables, hinting at iambic pentameter. It seems like we'll be dealing with a mix of iambic meters in this poem, so head on over to the "Form and Meter" section for more.

Lines 5-6But such a tide as moving seems asleep,    Too full for sound and foam•Looks like, instead of a moaning bar, our speaker would rather sail on "such a tide as moving seems asleep." Get it? Got it? No?•Shmoop's got your back. Basically, he's just saying that he'd rather be sailing at high tide, when that sandbar is buried way beneath the water. •In order for that to happen, the tide has to be "too full for sound and foam." In other words, the tide has to be high enough that waves won't break on the sandbar. He can just sail right over it, and be on his merry (deadly) way. •Tennyson is really flexing his poetry muscles here. Not only is he using the metaphor of sailing to talk about kicking the bucket (and seriously, which one would you rather talk about?), he's also using some figurative language to describe the sea on which he sails. He wants it to seem asleep as it moves, as if the sea were alive.

Lines 9-10 Twilight and evening bell,

    And after that the dark! Not that we're expert sailors or anything, but does it sound a

little risky to anyone else that this dude is setting sail at twilight of all times? Fair warning, fair Shmoopers, the open ocean in the pitch dark sounds like a recipe for sheer terror.

But nevertheless, our speaker's headed that way—setting sail after the sun has set, and planning to still be at sail when he reaches the open ocean, where electricity is hard to come by.

These lines call back to the first stanza, when the speaker cries, "sunset and evening star." Only here, the imagery has changed a bit. It's now twilight (not sunset), and he hears a bell, instead of a call. Time is passing—it's a bit later in the process.

The bell reminds us of two things—the bells you might hear on boats in a harbor, and the trumpets we mentioned in stanza 1, which call people to the afterlife.

Lines 11-12 And may there be no sadness of farewell,

    When I embark; Oooh, things are getting personal. The speaker, when he

finally sails on out of this harbor, doesn't want the people he leaves behind to be bummed and make a big scene. 

In fact, it sounds like he doesn't even want these folks to say goodbye at all. There's just too much sadness in all that tear-jerking fanfare.

In yet another echo of the first stanza, these words call back to the speaker's wish for no "moaning of the bar."

The gist here is that this guy wants to just slip away in the night—no muss, no fuss, no awkward side hugs or cheek kisses. When he goes, he just wants to be gone.

Lines 13-16 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 crossed the bar.

All right Shmoopers, it's time to get this show on the road. The speaker brings it home in this final stanza, wrapping up his sailing-as-death extended metaphor and leaving us with a little spiritual hope to boot. 

First, he says he knows that "the flood," or sea may "bear [him] far," or take him far beyond the "bourne of Time and Place," or boundary of time and place.

This is the first dead-on, unmistakable moment in which we know that this guy is not talking about a weekend sail on his sloop. We mean, we've never heard of a seaside town called Time and Place—have you?

Then, he says that, even though he knows this is all gonna go down, it's cool, because he thinks he's going to get to see his "Pilot face to face."

What's that about? Well, if we're following the whole sailing-as-death metaphor through, our best guess is that our speaker's Pilot (with that capital letter and all) is none other than God himself—the man upstairs. Instead of a pilot of a boat, God has been the pilot of this speaker's life.

And guess what? When the speaker finally crosses that sandbar and reaches the open ocean—when he finally crosses over into death, we mean, he'll come face to face with God in heaven. 

So really, it's not all that bad. Sure, he's headed into darkness, but at least God's at the other end of it.