Two poems about dying well — one expansive and one concise — naturally complement each other for anyone looking to explore how English-language poetry addresses life’s toughest subject. William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" (1817) stretches to eighty-one lines of blank verse and was penned by a teenager influenced by Wordsworth and contemplating mortality. In contrast, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" (1889) consists of sixteen lines with interlocking rhyme, written in just twenty minutes during a ferry ride by an octogenarian who had already outlived many loved ones. Despite the vast differences in age and time between these two poets, both poems ultimately arrive at the same conclusion: death should not be fought or mourned, but faced with calm acceptance. Their approaches, however, are drastically different. Bryant draws on the natural world for his insights, while Tennyson relies on faith. Bryant offers comfort through the vastness of existence — you will join all those who have lived; Tennyson provides solace through personal connection — you will meet your Pilot face to face. Together, they represent the two major sources of consolation that Western poetry has provided in the face of death: nature and God.
The Reader's Atlas · Compare
ThanatopsisCrossing the Bar
Two poems about dying well — one expansive and one concise — naturally complement each other for anyone looking to explore how English-language poetry addresses life’s toughest subject.
Poets
William Cullen Bryant / Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Years
1817
§01 The thesis
Thanatopsis & Crossing the Bar
A reader's case for putting these two side by side — what each carries, and what they argue when they sit on the same page.
§02 The dialectic axes
The two poems on four axes
Each axis isolates one specific vector — speaker, form, image, closing move — and reads the two poems against each other on that single dimension.
Axis
Poem A
Thanatopsis
William Cullen Bryant
Poem B
Crossing the Bar
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
01Speaker
Poem A · Thanatopsis
Bryant's speaker acts as a guide for someone — "thee" — who is scared of death. Having already faced this fear, the speaker is leading the reader on the journey. The tone is confident, even slightly firm, reminiscent of a tutor who won't allow you to succumb to panic.
Poem B · Crossing the Bar
Tennyson's speaker is the dying man, expressing his thoughts in the first person about his approaching transition. There’s no frightened listener to comfort. The poem feels intimate, almost like a prayer — "And may there be no moaning of the bar" — directed at no specific person, or maybe even to God.
02Form
Poem A · Thanatopsis
"Thanatopsis" is composed in blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter — spanning eighty-one lines. This extended format enables Bryant to gather numerous examples: the Barcan desert, the Oregon river, kings, patriarchs, and infants. The poem builds towards its conclusion through this accumulation.
Poem B · Crossing the Bar
"Crossing the Bar" consists of sixteen lines organized into four quatrains, following an ABAB rhyme scheme. The rhymes feel gentle instead of forceful, and the poem's brevity makes a statement on its own: a man at peace doesn’t require many words.
03Image
Poem A · Thanatopsis
Bryant's main image portrays the earth as a universal tomb — "the great tomb of man" — adorned with hills, rivers, and oceans. The oak tree sends its roots into the buried body. The dead vastly outnumber the living, much like a continent overshadows a small group of people. Scale matters.
Poem B · Crossing the Bar
Tennyson's main image depicts a ship navigating a sandbar at the harbor entrance, setting sail into the sea as dusk falls. It feels personal and focused—just one vessel, one tide, and one evening star—rather than broad or sweeping. In this context, the ocean represents a threshold rather than an ultimate destination.
04Closing move
Poem A · Thanatopsis
Bryant concludes with a simile: face your grave like a man who wraps his blankets around himself and settles in for sweet dreams. Death is likened to sleep. The comfort here is both earthly and tangible — a rest after hard work, a darkness that is just darkness.
Poem B · Crossing the Bar
Tennyson closes with hope, not rest: "I hope to see my Pilot face to face / When I have crost the bar." The journey doesn’t finish at the ocean; it culminates in an encounter. Death is a passage to a presence, not a fading into nothingness.
§03 Synthesis & departure
The shared ground and the divergence
Shared
Both poems directly teach about dying. Bryant concludes with straightforward advice: "So live, that when thy summons comes... approach thy grave / Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch / About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." In contrast, Tennyson shapes his poem around a wish for a death that is quiet, undramatic, and free from weeping. Neither poet focuses on physical pain or the unpleasantness of the body. Instead, they both draw meaning from the natural world: Bryant through landscapes like hills, rivers, oceans, and oak roots, while Tennyson paints a single extended seascape with elements like tides, sandbars, harbors, and the open sea. Both poems were written with the authors' own deaths in mind—Bryant as a reflective adolescent envisioning it, and Tennyson as an elderly man sensing its approach. They quickly became canonical, taught in schools on both sides of the Atlantic and often read at funerals, highlighting how effectively each one speaks to the living left behind.
Where they diverge
The most significant difference lies in theology. "Thanatopsis" does not mention God, an afterlife, or reunion. Its solace comes purely from the idea that your atoms will return to the earth, allowing you to share that earth with every person who ever lived. Nature holds the authority in this poem, rather than divinity. In contrast, "Crossing the Bar" presents a different perspective. Tennyson's closing sentiment centers on the hope of encountering "my Pilot face to face" — a personal God awaiting on the other side of death. For him, the ocean isn't a final destination but a passage to another realm.
This difference is reflected in their forms. Bryant uses unrhymed iambic pentameter — a blank verse that can stretch and shrink, gather examples, and circle back. It feels like thinking aloud in an expansive space. On the other hand, Tennyson composes in four concise quatrains with a steady ABAB rhyme scheme, where each stanza conveys a complete thought. The tightness is intentional: a man who has expressed all he needs to and is ready to stop talking. Bryant's poem requires length to persuade, while Tennyson's achieves persuasion through brevity.
§04 A reader's order of operations
Which to read first
If "Thanatopsis" was your starting point — if you connected with its broad perspective on human mortality and its calm, nature-based solace — then "Crossing the Bar" will serve as a helpful counterbalance. Tennyson reduces Bryant's sweeping imagery to a solitary harbor at twilight, substituting nature's power with personal belief. If you began with Tennyson and appreciated its brevity and subtle optimism, "Thanatopsis" will reveal how that same drive for acceptance manifests when a poet has eighty lines without a God to rely on.
§05 Reader's questions
On Thanatopsis vs Crossing the Bar, frequently asked
Answer
"Thanatopsis" was the first to be written. Bryant created an early version around 1811, at the age of about seventeen, and it was published in 1817. Tennyson wrote "Crossing the Bar" in 1889, over seventy years later.
Answer
Yes, particularly in high school and introductory college poetry classes. They are commonly used together in units about elegy, mortality, and consolation poems because they provide opposing answers—nature versus faith—to the same question.
Answer
From "Thanatopsis," the closing image is: "like someone who wraps the drapery of their couch around them and lies down to enjoy pleasant dreams." From "Crossing the Bar," the final couplet reads: "I hope to see my Pilot face to face when I have crossed the bar."
Answer
Bryant started working on the poem when he was about seventeen and completed a version by his early twenties. It was published in the North American Review in 1817, when he was twenty-three years old. One reason the poem gained fame so quickly is that it was written by a teenager.
Answer
That’s the story Hallam, Tennyson's son, shared: Tennyson got the inspiration for the poem while crossing the Solent on a ferry in 1889, and it was almost fully formed when he wrote it down. At that time, Tennyson was eighty years old and passed away two years later. He requested that this poem always be included at the end of any collection of his works.
Answer
A sandbar is the shallow ridge of sand at the mouth of a harbor that a ship must navigate to reach the open sea. In the poem, it symbolizes the boundary between life and death. The "moaning" of the bar describes the sound waves create when they break over shallow ground.
Answer
No — and that’s part of what made it so striking for 1817. The poem provides solace through nature and the shared experience of death instead of relying on Christian resurrection or divine judgment. Some early readers felt uneasy about its secular perspective. Bryant later included the opening and closing lines to soften the tone, but the central argument still lacks a religious foundation.