[Faramir Jones]

I was pleasantly surprised to read your last entry, Bêthberry, which gave me a lot to think about!

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I see a few other differences, such as those of metre and rhyme scheme. "Bilbo's Last Song" is much more like Tennyson's "Blow, bugle, blow", particularly with its sonority and alliteration. The themes of sea and death and melancolic longing are common in Victorian poetry-- such as, as I'm sure you know, Arnold's"Dover Beach" and even Swinburne's 'In the Bay", which uses the 'harbour-bar' image a little over ten years before Tennyson does.

I agree that the metre and rhyme are different.

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

However, what I think is the most important difference between the two poems, in spite of their similarities, is their provenance.

Right you are that "Crossing the Bar" is traditionally set at the end of Tennyson's collected poems. Hallam Tennyson in his Memoir reported his father's last request, which has been honoured down through the years. However, Tolkien's "Bilbo's Last Lay" (the original title of this lyric) was written under a very different context. As Tennyson Sr.'s request makes clear, he conceived of the poem as a conclusion to his entire life's work and a fitting end. He must have assumed the audience that existed for all his work. With Tolkien, however, we have a very different situation. He wrote the poem for one person, his secretary, and she kept the poem private until after his death. I don't know what prompted the writing--was it to thank her for years of work with him, was it at her request for a final song from Bilbo, did they discuss Tennyson's final lyric? Certainly Tolkien never asked his editors to include it in future editions of LotR and he never asked his son Christopher to make it public as his final work. Did Tolkien ask that the poem be kept private, at least until after his death? More contextual knowledge of the poem would be helpful.

It would certainly be helpful to know more about the background to Tolkien's poem, if such information can be found. I agree completely that Tennyson conceived of his poem as 'a conclusion to his entire life's work and a fitting end. He must have assumed the audience that existed for all his work'; and we don't have any similar evidence to arrive at a similar conclusion regarding Tolkien and his poem.

I was very interested in what you had to say here:

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

You see, I think "Bilbo's Last Lay" is an elaborate literary joke on Tolkien's part. He had a lively and even wicked sense of humour, as, I think, most professional medievalists do. Even his title, "Lay" is full of punnery and was ultimately rejected because it's association with medieval lays would not be widely appreciated. It is very important that the speaker in Tennyson's poem would appear to be the poet himself whereas Tolkien's poem clearly identifies Bilbo. This is not Tolkien's last poem, but Bilbo's. And Bilbo, while a wonderful character, is clearly at times the repository of some affectionate humour over his scribblings and his inopportune habit of falling asleep. Perhaps one could suggest that Tolkien was here providing a comment on Tennyson's role as the expositor of elven lore for a new age.

You see, I doubt very much that Tolkien had much admiration for Tennyson. This could explain the absence of any comment on him, as much as simple lack of knowledge of the elder poet's work. I would love to know what is in Tolkien's Arthurian romance, the one which Humphrey Carpenter and Verlyn Flieger mention as uncompleted so I could compare it with Tennyson's Idylls. But I am not the only one who finds Tennyson's Arthurian romance a disappointment. According to Roger Sale, in his review ("Tennyson as a Great Poet") of John D. Rosenberg's The Fall of Camelot, quite a few others have as well. Henry James apparently thought Tennyson's Arthur was "rather a prig" and Swinburne thought he was reduced "to the level of a wittol, Guinevere to the level of a woman of intrigue, and Lancelot to the level of a 'co-respondent' ". Hopkins offered "Charades from the Middle Ages" as a title while Swinburne, again, suggested, "Idylls of the Prince Consort" (p. 443). That's quite a cat fight, to borrow a comparison from the American figure skater Johnny Weir, as most of these writers have fairly prestigious credentials in medievalism themselves. Was it simply professional jealousy? What I would like to do is suggest where Tolkien thought Tennyson didn't 'get it quite right' as a way of explaining why "Bilbo's Last Song" could be an elaborate literary joke rather than evidence of deep and abiding influence.
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If we look at Tennyson's translation of an Old English poem and compare it with a contemporary literal translation, we can see some of these problems. Here's a link which provides the original Old English, Tennyson's version, a literal translation, and a line by line translation of The Battle of Brunnaburh.

In fairness of course, this translation is not Tennyson's finest poem. But I think it demonstrates more than adequately how not to translate Old English and how not to be a medievalist according to Tolkien. It's risible and as such I think Tolkien rather slyly and with some ingenuity found a way to parody Tennyson's final lyric.

I'm in agreement that Tolkien had fun with 'Crossing the Bar', just as he had fun with the nursery rhyme 'Hey Diddle Diddle', inventing its 'ancestor' in the shape of 'The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late'. But I don't see any evidence that a reason for having such fun in this case was due to a dislike of Tennyson and his works. I don't rule your theory out as a possibility; it's just there is no evidence for it.