This file was created with Myriad's Harmony Assistant-Virtual Singer. If you need the Myriad plug-in to play it, click here for their web site and click on "Music Plug-in" on the left. Please be sure you have the most recent version for your system, especially if you are running Windows 95-2000.

This is the last one of my compositions that wasn't written originally on the computer. It is simple but effective I think.

There have been several notable musical settings of the poem from the anthem setting of Sir Hubert Parry to the modern folk-like version of Salamander Crossing.

All the descriptions of how this poem came to be written seem to vary; the "bar" of the title is undoubtedly a sandbar but it's original location seems to change from version to version (It's usually thought to be off the Isle of Wight.). Tennyson, though, uses it as a metephor for dying and he insisted it be published at the end of all collections of his poetry. Though it is generally assumed, with some justification, that the "Pilot" at the end of the poem refers to God, apparently the poet did not entirely hold conventional religious views. Therefore it is sometimes thought that it may refer to his friend Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-33) whose early death inspired the famous poem "In Memoriam".

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