May 9, 2010
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LIT211
I am currently taking an introductory literature course that goes toward my degree. Each week we have to write a journal entry following certain rubrics about a poetry selection for that week. since I haven’t been posting much lately and I am a bit proud of this journal entry, (I got a perfect score on it) I thought I would post it here. I hope those who read it enjoy.
Ann Kraeger
Professor Hensarling
LITR211 A001
27 April 2010
When I was a Callow Youth
It was called The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson: Complete and Unabridged, the first volume of poetry that I had ever been given. A gift bestowed upon me by the first love of my youth at the very tender age of twelve. What young girl doesn’t love poetry? Perhaps I did more than most. There we were at the used book sale sponsored by the school library and before us sat that volume of poetry with a sticker proclaiming to the world that for one thin dime it could be purchased and brought home by any lover of Tennyson. My love stood beside me and without being told that that book was what I really wanted to take home, handed his dime to the librarian, turned to me and bestowed on me the desire of my sixth grade heart. Fortunately my love for Tennyson has endured as my regard for that young boy hasn’t.
The last poem in that precious volume is Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar and I am ashamed to say that is not one of the poems that became a favorite back then when I was a callow youth. Although I took the book home that very day and read it from cover to cover burying myself in the delights to be found in the verse penned there, that particular poem didn’t impress me at the time. As a preteen girl I was far more transported by The Lady of Shalott, and Lancelot and Elaine than by the thought of death, and why would a poet as fine as Tennyson write about such a topic anyway.
It was only later on upon countless re-readings of that beautiful poem, and a deepening of my faith in God that I came to understand what Tennyson was saying and why indeed he would want to write about such a topic. Now, as I am older the thought of death no longer causes the same feelings in me as it did in my youth. No more the horror, fear, and morbid fascination accompany thoughts of death and the afterlife.
Tennyson’s comparison between death and a sea voyage is a beautiful one. It truly captures the possibility of both a peaceful death, which we all pray for, and a more violent death, which we all dread. Yet even though the sea can be both peaceful and tempestuous, and we all know it, Tennyson speaks only of the peace and calm of it and dwells instead upon the hope of seeing “my Pilot face to face when I have crossed the bar”(line 16).
Works Cited
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. “Crossing the Bar.” The Norton Anthology English Literature. Ed.
Stephen Greenblatt. New York/London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. 1211-1212. Print.
Comments (2)
Reading this about Tennyson make me want to go to the library and find this book of poems! I enjoy reading, but I wish I was more literature minded, especially when it comes to poetry.
well done