Context: Tennyson asked that this poem be placed at the end of all editions of his poetry, for this simple, muted lyric is his final thought on death. The tone is one of quiet acceptance and of faith undisturbed. He compares his journey into death with the passage of a ship away from the land and beyond the bar of sand at the entrance to the harbor, and hopes that his end will come quietly and without turmoil, his soul returning to eternity as a tide returns to the depths of the ocean, silently, with no turbulence and strife where the water flows by the bar.