Dover Beach

Now at some point I'll have to put Cliffs of Dover on my playlist. Awesome.

This poem is all about faith, or essentially a lack thereof. This is brought about through a depiction of the ocean ebbing and flowing onto the beach like waves. The speaker relates this surging back and forth motion to a sense of longing for something. The sense of faith is then brought out through the line "The Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full. The speaker is basically saying that the world was once full of faith, this sea had no sense of longing, because it was full and had no room to ebb or flow. The ocean had no longing because the world was run by faith. Now, however, the speaker notes that the sea has emptied a bit, and now there is only a longing to fill it once again with the faith the world once had. In this poem, the pebbles represent the people of the world. Because of the lack of faith, there is no stability or foundation: the pebbles simply sway back and forth due to their lack of faith. However, when the Sea of Faith was full, there was no ebb, and the pebbles were stable and strong. The speaker ultimately wants the world to return to how it once was.

Crossing the Bar

This poem, yet another in the long line of poems about dying, evokes a particularly strong tone (Question 8). First, the speaker makes clear his metaphor between crossing a sandbar and dying with the line "may there be no moaning of the bar when I put out to sea." The speaker here is requesting that nobody cry or mourn his passing, thus giving the general impression that the speaker is not upset about his death, but rather views it as a happy occasion, and doesn't want anyone else to mourn his death. This point is reinforced by the line "May there be no sadness of farewell when I embark." However, the poem takes on a deeper tone with the line "When that which drew from out the boundless deep turns again home." The speaker adds a bit of a religious element to his attitued by essentially stating that the afterlife is his true home, and that he is only returning to where he belongs. Yet another line to reinforce this religious attitude is "I hope to see my Pilot face to face when I have crossed the bar." The term "hope" in this line could have a potentially ambiguous meaning, but because of the strongly established tone of religiously-based optimism, the word takes on the very clear meaning of strong desire. The speaker does not just view death in a positive light, but it is his ultimate desire. He wants, above all else, to return home and see God.

I like sailing....