LitAide

This poem was written in the year 1889 by Tennyson and he died three years later. He was old and grappling with the idea of death, he wrote this poem. The narrator is figuratively walking towards his end. He is nearing his death and he compares his impending death to crossing a sandbar (see the below image).  Sandbar It is nearly sunset and the evening star is visible in the sky. It means the poet has lived and savoured his life and now he is on the verge of death, here dusk is compared with old age. He also receives confirmation from heaven that the time has come for him to return. As he returns, he doesn't want to disturb/erode the sandbar. But he has to cross it in order to reach the ocean. Tennyson wants to get carried to heaven on a silent tide peacefully or while he is asleep. In other words, Tennyson wants to die peacefully or we can say that all he wants is painless death.  The tide on which he will be carried, should not be full of foam which will make noise as tides make

 The narrator introduces herself as a "nobody" and asks about the listener's identity. Before (s)he replies, she enquired whether he/she is also a nobody like her. She feels she has an affinity to the listener because they share a common ground of being "nobody". Her metaphor of "nobody" definitely suggests an ordinary person who attracts no attention from people. She shushed the listener to keep quiet about their identity because if others know, they will no longer be nobody i.e. anonymous. People will "banish"  them i.e. this publicity will cause them to lose their anonymity which is precious to the narrator.  The next line shows how much she is afraid of getting under public eye. She finds it "dreary". She compares a celebrity or an attention-loving person to a frog who does nothing other than blabbering (uttering) his name to a non-living thing like a bog which refer to flatterers who keep repeating artificial or false praises a