Many
of us today likes to express what we feel through quotes, poems, and stories
which we all can relate to. For us, writing is freedom since it enables us to
write what we feel not to ask for sentiments but to encourage others to express
themselves through writings. Through writings, our National hero, Jose Rizal,
sent his message to every Filipinos to fight in a peaceful way for our
countries' independence. All of us can be a writer but for some, they need inspiration
for them to express what they thought continuously.
There was this one period in our CAE
(Communication Arts in English) Class that we had read and discussed the poem
Crossing the Bar in our Language in Literature book and I find it a very nice
composition. It was written by Alfred Lord Tennyson. A month had past and our
subject teacher asked us to choose one Anglo-American author and show what he
does, his life and our realizations about that author that you choose and my
partner and I immediately choose Alfred Lord Tennyson. Both of us searched for his
compositions and he mostly had written poems. He also wrote different
quotations that we can really relate but before our realizations about his
works, here are his profile.
Alfred
Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was born on August 6, 1809 in Somersby,
Linocolnshire, England. He was married to Emily Sellwood and they had 2
children namely Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson and Hon. Lionel Tennyson.
He lived with his family in Farringford, a house in Freshwater on the Isle of
Wight in 1853. From there the family moved in 1869 to Aldworth, Surrey. He died
on October 6, 1892 at Aldwort and was buried in the Poet's Corner in
Westminister Abbey.
He was a Poet Laureate of Great Britain and
Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most
popular British poets and one of the well- loved Victorian poets. He began to write
poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. At the age of twelve he
wrote a 6,000- line epic poem. His father tutored them in classical and modern
languages. After spending four unhappy years in school he was tutored at home.
He escaped home in 1827 to attend Trinity College, Cambridge. In that same
year, he and his brother Charles published Poems by Two Brothers. They joined
to an undergraduate literary club which is the "Apostles" and they
met Arthur Hallam, who became Alfred's closest friend. The "Apostles"
provided Tennyson, who was tremendously shy, with much needed friendship and
confidence as a poet. Hallam and Tennyson became the best of friends; they
toured Europe together in 1830 and again in 1832. Hallam's sudden death in 1833
because of stroke greatly affected the young poet. The long elegy "In
Memoriam" and many of Tennyson's other poems are tributes to Hallam. At
the age of 41, Tennyson had established himself as the most popular poet of the
Victorian era.
Tennyson was known as the most popular poet
during the Victorian era. He excelled at penning short lyric such as
"Break, Break, Break", "The Charge of the Light Brigade
"Tears, Idle Tears", and "Crossing the Bar". Much of his
verse was based on classical mythological themes, such as "Ulysses".
He published "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical" in 1830 which included
"Mariana". In 1832 he published a second volume entitled simpy
"Poems". In 1842, Tennyson's Poems in two volumes was a tremendous
critical and popular success.In the same year, he published "The Lady of
Shalott", "The Lotus-eaters", "Morte d' Arthur", and
"Ulysses". In 1844, he accepted peerage, becoming Alfred Lord
Tennyson. In 1850, with the publication of "In Memoriam", Tennyson
became one of Britain's most popular poets. He was selected Poet Laureate in
succession to Wordsworth.The patriotic poem " Charge of the Light Brigade
was published in Maud in 1855.It is one of his best works.In 1864 he published
"Enoch Arden" which was based on a true story. In 1859-1885, Tennyson
published the first poems of "Idylls of the Kings", which sold more
than 10,000 copies in one month.Tennyson. The poems is dealt with the Arthurian
Theorem. He wrote several plays, among them the poetic dramas "Queen
Mary" in 1875, and "Harold " in 1876. He also wrote some
phrases. Tennyson is the ninth most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations.
Sources: http://www.online-literature.c/
https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/p
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik
Now that you have learned about his
profile, I'm gonna tell you about our realizations in Tennyson's works. When I
searched for his works on google, I saw one of his quotations that says ' It's
better to have loved and lost than to never have love at all. '
I agree with this quotation of his since when we love, we always tend to lose someone or something when we meet the wrong person that we should not really love in a romantic way. In life, especially in a relationship, we need to experience love to feel how to love and to be loved and lost to learn lessons, to make ourselves a better and stronger version of ourselves before, and to lead us to the real one that is ready to lose anything and everything for you. Always remember that in life, we always take the wrong road which led us in experiencing love, pain, and lost and those things can and will always bring us in the right path.
Here is what I thought when I first read Tennyson's
Crossing the Bar. What I understand with this poem is that it tells us about
death.
I interpret sunset and evening star as heaven
and hell, our two destinations when we die. The author wants to tell us that we
should not mourn for the lost. Death for us living things is just a natural
thing and through death we realize that in this world, we will always
experience death no matter how rich you are or how strong you are, we all end
up with the same outcome.
Different life but same outcome, death, which I know
we all are afraid to face. When we experience death, we always tend to be sad
and mourn for the great los. I admit that's what I always do when one of the
closest family or friends that I love had died. There was this one time when my grand father
died and I was really sad but then, the priest that gave the homily during his'
funeral mass said that we should not
mourn for my grandpa's death but instead be happy for he can now rest and be
with God. With this, I realized that I should not cry for sadness but for
happiness and I know tha my grandpa doesn't want to see me crying. I guess this
is what Tennyson is telling us as he said 'And may there be no sadness of farewell.'
I think the reason as to why Alfred Lord
Tennyson wrote Crossing the Bar is because his bestfriend, Arthur Hallam, died
due to stroke which greatly affected him. In my opinion, the reason why he
wrote it is that he wants to comfort himself through writings and he wants to
let it all out as I said earlier in the introduction that writing gives us
freedom. The freedom to express ourselves and our feelings. Writing isn't just
for nerds. It's for everybody.
