Readings · Poems
Crossing the Bar
Alfred Lord Tennyson · 16 lines
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,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ 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 crost the bar.
About this reading
Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote this poem in October 1889, in his eighty-first year, on the day he went from Aldworth to Farringford. His son's memoir says it came to him in a moment. It was first published that December in Demeter and Other Poems, and a few days before he died Tennyson asked that it be placed at the end of every edition of his poems.
- First published
- 1889
- Text from
- Demeter and Other Poems (London, 1889)
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