Published 1889. It is not in the Virginia trial edition of 1889. Written Oct. 1889 while crossing the Solent: ‘When he repeated it to me in the evening, I said, “That is the crown of your life’s work.” He answered, “It came in a moment”’ (H.T.). P. L. Elliott notes that in MS Mat. (Lincoln) H.T.’s words had been: ‘That is one of the most beautiful poems ever written’ (The Making of the Memoir, 1978, p. 14). T. said to W. F. Rawnsley that he ‘began and finished it in twenty minutes’ (Nineteenth Century xcvii (1925) 195). It had been in T.’s mind since April or May 1889, when his nurse suggested he write a hymn after his recovery from a serious illness (J. Tennyson, The Times, 5 Nov. 1936). For the image, cp. De Profundis (III 67), and The Passing of Arthur 445: ‘From the great deep to the great deep he goes.’ The ‘bar’ is the sandbank across the harbour-mouth. All variants from H.Nbk 54 are below. D. Sonstroem argues that the poem is a reconciliation of a great many of T.’s earlier poems (VP viii, 1970, 55–60). The poem is here printed out of sequence because of T.’s wish: ‘Mind you put my Crossing the Bar at the end of all editions of my poems.’
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.
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
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 crost the bar.
¶462. 2. And] But H.MS. The ‘call’ is a marine term, a summons to duty, here suggesting that of God; but it is ominous too. Cp. the death of Enoch Arden, when ‘There came so loud a calling of the sea’ (p. 615 and n).
3. Cp. Charles Kingsley’s The Three Fishers, a poem on death: ‘And the harbour bar be moaning’. T. had a copy (Lincoln) of Andromeda and Other Poems (1858), in which this poem appeared. He read some of Kingsley’s poems to E.T. in 1858 (her Journal). P. Hope-Wallace suggests that Kingsley referred to the common estuary in Barnstaple Bay, where the joining of two rivers’ waters and the incoming sea can produce a loud moaning sound above the sand-bar at the mouth of the inlet (Tennyson, ed. K. Amis, 1973, P. 218).
7. drew] came MS. ‘The boundless deep’ recurs often in T., with something of the same mood and theme in The Ancient Sage 189–94; and cp. Sea Dreams 85–6: ‘such a tide’, ‘from out the boundless outer deep’. Cp. In Memoriam: Epilogue 123–4: ‘A soul shall draw from out the vast/And strike his being into bounds.’
10. after that] then MS 1st reading.
11. And] But MS.
13. For… our] Alone from out the MS. bourne: suggested by Hamlet on death, ‘from whose bourn/No traveller returns’, III i 79–80. 13–16. J. H. Buckley (p. 287) compares H. F. Lyte’s famous hymn: ‘Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven…/Ye behold him face to face…/Dwellers all in time and space.’ Also 1 Corinthians xiii 12: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.’ As so often, T.’s mind may have gone back to Arthur Hallam, to In Memoriam cxxxi: ‘And come to look on those we loved/And that which made us, face to face’ H.MS. Hallam’s poem To Two Sisters (Mary and at this point Emily T.) had said: ‘Till our souls see each other face to face’ (Motter, p. 90).
14] Alone I sail, and far, MS.
15. I] But MS. ‘The pilot has been on board all the while, but in the dark I have not seen him’ (T.). ‘He explained the Pilot as “that Divine and Unseen Who is always guiding us”’ (H.T.). T. J. Assad discusses the objections to the image, Tulane Studies in English viii (1958) 153–63. P. L. Elliott notes that H.T., at an earlier stage of Mem., deleted: ‘They [T. and Herbert Warren in 1892] spoke together of Crossing the Bar and of the absurdity of the “Pilot” being Arthur Hallam or my brother Lionel’ (The Making of the Memoir, p. 27).