Sunday, October 16, 2011


(Photo from www.nationalgeographic.com)
POEM #17- Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

Little Alfred was obviously a writer from the beginning. At the age of 12, he wrote a 6,000 line epic poem!!! His father was mentally ill, and that combined with his alcoholism to make for an unhealthy home. Tennyson's brothers were in turn, a violent quarreler, an asylum inmate, and an opium addict. Truly sad. The gifted Tennyson managed to get into Trinity College at Cambridge at 18, where he was encouraged in his poetry by peers. By the age of 41, he was named Poet Laureate of Britain and was doing well financially. At the age of 75, he accepted a peerage and became an official "Lord."

This poem always reminds me of my great-uncle Lloyd Creel. He's been gone now for 15 years or so. A truly beautiful spirit. He was a mortician by trade, but no one ever saw a happier one. It did creep me out a little to see his mortician's pin (a skull and crossbones) that he wore in the casket. Anyhoo... He always called me Goldilocks, and when the roads would get icy, he would hook an old wooden ladder to the back of his truck and yank us kids around those country roads or through the cow pasture, whooping like a bunch of Indians. Sometimes it was a tire. In the South, we don't exactly own sleds, you know. In his seventies, he rode a motorcycle. He stood up often at church, would raise both hands in the air, smile broadly and say, "This is the day the Lord hath made. I will REJOICE and be glad in it!" That's the last thing I heard him say. This was the poem he wanted read at his funeral. I plan to someday see my Pilot in the same way he did!


Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have cross’d the bar.

1 comment:

Valorie Quesenberry said...

A masterful piece of poetry.