"Crossing the Bar"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In this poem, the speaker talks of how when he sails out to see he wants there to be a quiet tide that will turn him toward home. Then the speaker wishes that no one will be sad when he departs. Though his departure with bring him to a time and place that we as humans cannot truly grasp, his departure should hopefully lead him to his Pilot, or God.
In the first stanza, the speaker calls out the "sunset and evening star" and in the third, he calls out "twilight and evening bell" (Lord Tennyson, 886). I think these times of day, which are close to night, represent the death which is approaching the speaker. In the poem, the speaker accepts death. The sandbar symbolizes the division between life and death that he is about to cross.
A question in the book asks what type of death the speaker was wishing. I thought based on the fact that he was accepting of his death, he wanted a peaceful death. It also says in line 4 "But such a tide as moving seems asleep." The tide is the way by which the speaker is being departed from this life. Therefore, I inferred that the speaker wished for a peaceful quiet sleep, such as dying in their sleep.
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