poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

This beautiful poem has been set to music and used by many Christian hymnals today. It Has always been an inspiration to me.

Tennyson wrote this poem in less than 20 minutes while crossing fom the Isle of Wight on a ferry. Talk about being inspired by the Muse!

This peom is strong because the hazzards of crossing a bar are real and finite; the passage requires seamanship and courage to fight the turbulance of a river breaking into an ocean. Tennyson choosing this point to illustrate his adventure into death and beyond, is both graphic and etherial. I should change my rating to excellent.

Crossing the bar actually fits rather well to the tune of Faure's 'Pavane'. Take the exposition, and it is a terribly haunting match.

Tennyson wrote this beautiful poem in 1889 aged 80. When he showed it to his son, Hallam, the latter said that he thought that it was the culmination of his father’s life as a poet. Tennyson replied that it just came to him in a flash. I think I read somewhere that the “moaning of the bar” was something to do with the ferry crossing that Tennyson frequently made to the Isle of Wight. Tennyson later asked that it should always be the final poem in any published collection.
I read an interesting piece in the Penguin guide to English Literature recently. It seems that Wilfred Owen was not so keen. This is Owen on the subject of Tennyson’s personal unhappiness:

“as for misery, was he ever frozen alive with dead men for comforters? Did he hear the moaning at the Bar, not at twilight and evening bell only, but at dawn, noon, and night, eating and sleeping, walking and working, always the close moaning of the Bar; the thunder, the hissing, the whining of the Bar? Tennyson it seems was always a great child.”

The problem here is that people who have suffered a great deal, tend to play down the sufferings of other people. Tennyson’s experiences – miserable childhood, drunken father, grief, and poverty – were not comparable to Owen’s dreadful sufferings, but he was nevertherless traumatised by them.

This poem commenced my interest in poetry. I read it and cried. It alllows hope to mingle with the despair that the thought if death brings!

This peom depicts the feeling or experience of a man who is nearing his death. I became familiar with this poem since 3rd year high scholl and now that I'm in college we were asked to read a poem and analyze it. I chose this poem because it is good and I want to show or to read to them the feeling of a person nearing his end.