Compare and contrast Whitman's "Old Salt Kossabone" and Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar," paying attention to themes and stylistic features.

This is a great pairing. Whitman and Tennyson are really different kinds of poets, and, even though their theme here is similar, the poems are quite different.

Theme: Both poems are about death, and both poems use nautical language as a way of describing the process of dying.

Metaphor: Whitman suggests that the death of the old man is like the ship struggling against headwinds that he watches; once it catches the wind, it is out of sight, in the same way that the old man, finished with the struggle of life, dies. Tennyson has a similar motif in his poem; the second stanza compares the pull of death to a strong tide that is "too full for sound or foam."

Religion: Tennyson makes an explicit allusion to the afterlife in his poem: he hopes "to see my Pilot face to face" after death; Whitman on the other hand has no such allusion to God; the old man simply says: "She's free—she's on her destination"—and dies.

Speaker: An important difference in the poems is the speaker: in Whitman, the poet is an observer, telling the story of the old man's death; in the Tennyson, the poet is speaking about himself and how he hopes his own death will be.

Tone: The Whitman is more informal in tone of course; the subect matter of his poem (an old man looking out the window at ships on the sea) is not particularly exhalted, and the frame for the poem ("I'll tell you how he died") is conversational, or perhaps even akin to a folk tale. Tennyson, on the other hand, uses an extended metaphor (the "crossing the bar" idea) to evoke the journey of life, out of the deep, into the light, and then, at the end of day, back to the deep of death. Whereas Whitman is relating an incident from real life, complete with details (the married grandchild, the great armchair), Tennyson is describing a feeling.

Form: Tennyson uses rhymed stanzas, with a rhyme scheme of abab; Whitman, of course, is writing free verse, but his poem has a symmetrical opening and closing—it begins, "Far back, related on my mother's side, / Old Salt Kossabone, I'll tell you how he died" and ends with "he sat there dead, Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mother's side, far back." This symmetry is unusual for Whitman, and reinforces the "folk tale" quality of his poem.