"Crossing the Bar" by:Alfred, Lord Tennyson

In "Crossing the Bar," the narrator uses many symbols, such as "boundless deep," "the bar," "a tide," "the dark," and "Pilot." These symbols all represent different things dealing with the end life, death, and Heaven. I found this poem to be soothing because it portrays a peaceful death, with no morning, and moving on to the afterlife and God. In this poem, I found "the bar" which the speaker brings up twice to represent a point in time which when passed, a person can no longer go back. It is the point in which a person crosses from life to death. When the speaker said "I hope to see my Pilot... when I have crossed the bar," this became clear to me. I viewed the Pilot, whom the speaker "hope[s] to see...face to face," as God because of the capitalization of Pilot. I viewed the "twilight" and "evening bell" that the speaker sees before the "dark" as symbols of the white light that people often speak of seeing in near death experiences. It is God calling the speaker toward Him. The darkness is death itself. Finally, I saw "the tide" as a person's fate. The tide is always moving, smoothly and slowly. Likewise, the speaker has no control over his fate, but his ultimate fate, death is not a huge catastrophic deal, it is slow and peaceful.