Arbo: Crossing the Bar

Lord Tennyson writes about the accepting attitude toward death in his poem Crossing the Bar. Lord Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate by Queen Victoria in 1850 and wrote this poem three years prior to his own death. Crossing the Bar is a metaphor for the passage between life and death, crossing the sandbar and travelling to the ocean with its “boundless depth”. Lord Tennyson’s poem from 1889 has a century later been set to music by the American folkmusic singer / songwriter Rani Arbo and arranged for choir by Peter Amidon.